FLORA  ROOSrRTS  COFFIN 
LiGRARY  . 

COMMUHIX.Y  HOU€E 
NO....^fefe li 


THE 


LITERARY    CHARACTER; 


OR    THE    HISTORY    OF 


MEN  OF  GENIUS, 

JBtainn  from  tf)£ir  oton  Jcelinsg  antj  Confessiong. 
-      LITERARY  MISCELLANIES: 

AND    AN    INQUIRY    INTO 

THE   CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

BY 

ISAAC  DISRAELI. 


EDITED    BY    HIS    SON, 

THE    RIGHT    HON.   B.   DISRAELI. 


NEW    YORK: 

A.   C.  ARMSTRONG    AND    SON,    * 

714  Bkoadway. 
1881. 


University  Pkess  :  John  Wilson  &  Son, 
Cambridge. 


AUTHOE'S  PREFACE. 


Thb  following  Preface  was  prefixed  to  an  Edition  of 
the  author's  Miscellaneous  "Works  in  1840.  They  were 
comprised  in  a  thick  8vo  volume,  and  included  the 
Calamities  and  Quarrels  of  Authors,  now  published 
separately.  This  Preface  is  of  interest  for  the  expression 
of  the  author's  own  view  of  these  works. 

This  volume  comprises  my  writings  on  subjects  chiefly  of  our 
vernacular  literature.  Now  collected  together,  they  offer  an 
unity  of  design,  and  aflford  to  the  general  reader  and  to  the 
student  of  classical  antiquity  some  initiation  into  our  national 
Literature.  It  is  presumed  also,  that  they  present  materials  for 
thinking  not  solely  on  literary  topics ;  authors  and  books  are 
not  alone  here  treated  of, — a  comprehensive  view  of  human 
nature  necessarily  enters  into  the  subject  from  the  diversity  of 
the  characters  portrayed,  through  the  gradations  of  their  facril- 
ties,  the  influence  of  their  tastes,  and  those  incidents  of  their 
lives  prompted  by  their  fortunes  or  their  passions.  This  present 
volume,  with  its  brother  "  Curiosities  of  Litekatuee,"  now 
constitute  a  body  of  reading  which  may  awaken  knowledge  in 
minds  only  seeking  amusement,  and  refresh  the  deeper  studies 
of  the  learned  by  matters  not  unworthy  of  their  curiosity. 

The  LiTEEAET  Chaeactee  has  been  an  old  favourite  with 
many  of  my  contemporaries  departed  or  now  living,  who  have 
found  it  respond  to  their  own  emotions. 

The  Miscellanies  are  literary  amenities,  should  they  be 
found  to  deserve  the  title,  constructed  on  that  principle  early 
adopted  by  me,  of  interspersing  facts  with  speculation. 

The  Inquiey  into  the  Litebaet  and  Political  Chaeactee 
OF  James  the  First  has  surely  corrected  some  general  miscon- 
ceptions, and  thrown  light  on  some  obscure  points  in  the  history 
of  that  anomalous  personage.  It  is  a  satisfaction  to  me  to 
observe,  since  the  publication  of  this  tract,  that  while  some 
competent  judges  have  considered  the  "  evidence  irresistible," 
a  material  change  has  occurred  in  the  tone  of  most  writers. 


4  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

The  subject  presented  an  occasion  to  exliibit  a  minute  pictun 
of  that  age  of  transition  in  our  national  history. 

The  titles  of  Calamities  of  Authoes  and  Quaeeels  oi 
Authors  do  not  wholly  designate  the  works,  which  include  a 
considerable  portion  of  literary  history. 

Public  favour  has  encouraged  the  republication  of  these  various 
works,  which  often  referred  to,  have  long  been  diflScult  to  pro- 
cure. It  has  been  deferred  from  time  to  time  with  the  intention 
of  giving  the  subjects  a  more  enlarged  investigation  ;  but  I  have 
delayed  the  task  till  it  cannot  be  performed.  One  of  the  Calami- 
ties of  Authors  falls  to  my  lot,  the  delicate  organ  of  vision 
with  me  has  suffered  a  singular  disorder,* — a  disorder  which  no 
oculist  by  his  touch  can  heal,  and  no  physician  by  his  experi- 
ence can  expound ;  so  much  remains  concerning  the  frame  of 
man  unrevealed  to  man  ! 

In  the  midst  of  my  library  I  am  as  it  were  distant  from  it. 
My  unfinished  labours,  frustrated  designs,  remain  paralysed.  In 
a  joyous  heat  I  wander  no  longer  through  the  wide  circuit 
before  me.  The  "strucken  deer  "  has  the  sad  privilege  to  weep 
when  he  lies  down,  perhaps  no  more  to  course  amid  those  far- 
distant  woods  where  once  he  sought  to  range. 

Although  thus  compelled  to  refrain  in  a  great  measure  from 
all  mental  labour,  and  incapacitated  from  the  use  of  the  pen  and 
the  book,  these  works,  notwithstanding,  have  received  many 
important  corrections,  having  been  read  over  to  me  with 
critical  precision. 

Amid  this  partial  darkness  I  am  not  left  without  a  distant 
hope,  nor  a  present  consolation ;  and  to  Hek  who  has  so  often 
lent  to  me  the  light  of  her  eyes,  the  intelligence  of  her  voice, 
and  the  careful  work  of  her  hand,  the  author  must  ever  owe 
"the  debt  immense"  of  paternal  gratitude. 

London,  May,  1840. 

•  1  record  my  literary  calamity  as  a  warning  to  my  sedentary  brothers.  When 
my  eyes  dwell  on  any  oljoct,  or  wlienover  tliey  are  closed,  there  appear  on  a  bluish 
film  a  number  of  mathematical  squares,  which  are  the  reflection  of  the  fine  network 
of  the  retina,  succeeded  by  blolclies  which  subside  into  printed  characters,  appa- 
rently forming  distinct  words,  arranged  in  struigiit  lines  as  in  a  i>rinted  book ;  the 
monosyllables  are  often  legible.  This  Is  the  process  of  a  few  seconds.  It  is  re- 
markable that  the  usual  power  of  the  eye  is  not  injured  ir  dimluishud  for  distant 
objects,  while  those  near  are  clouded  over. 


OOIsTTENTS. 


LITERARY    CHARACTER. 

CHAPTER  I. 

PAOH 

Of  literary  characters,  and  of  the  lovers  of  literature  and  art  .     .     33 

CHAPTER  11. 
Of  the  adversaries  of  literary  men  among  themselves. — Matter-of- 
fact  men,  and  men  of  wit. — Tlie  political  economists. — Of  those 
who  abandon  their  studies. — Men  in  ofiBce. — The  arbiters  of 
public  opinion. — ^Those  who  treat  the  pursuits  of  literature  with 
levity 27 

CHAPTER  ni. 
Of  artists,  in  the  history  of  men  of  literary  genius. — Their  habits 
and  pursuits  analogous. — The  nature  of  their  genius  is  similar 
in  their  distinct  works. — Shown  by  their  parallel  eras,  and  by 
a  conunon  end  pursued  by  both 36 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Of  natural  genius. — Minds  constitutionally  different  cannot  have 
an  equal  aptitude. — Genius  not  the  result  of  habit  and  educa- 
tion.— Originates  in  pecuhar  qualities  of  the  mind. — The  predis- 
position of  genius. — ^A  substitution  for  the  white  paper  of 
Locke 39 

CHAPTER  Y. 
Tenth  of  genius. — Its  first  impulses  may  be  illustrated  by  its 
subsequent  actions. — Parents  have  another  association  of  the 
man  of  genius  than  we. — Of  genius,  its  first  habits. — Its  melan- 


6  CONTENTS. 

PASS 

choly. — Its  reveries. — Its  love  of  solitude. — Its  disposition  to 
repose. — Of  a  youth  distinguished  by  his  equals. — Feebleness 
of  its  first  attempts. — Of  genius  not  discoverable  even  in  man- 
hood.— The  education  of  the  youth  may  not  be  that  of  his 
genius. — An  unsettled  impulse,  querulous  till  it  finds  its  true 
occupation. — "With  some,  curiosity  as  intense  a  faculty  as  in- 
vention.— What  the  youth  first  applies  to  is  commonly  his 
delight  afterwards. — Facts  of  the  decisive  character  of  genius    48 

CHAPTER  YL 

The  first  studies. — The  self-educated  are  marked  by  stubborn 
peculiarities. — Their  errors. — Their  improvement  from  the 
neglect  or  contempt  they  incur. — The  history  of  self-education 
in  Moses  Mendelssohn. — Friends  usually  prejudicial  in  the  youth 
of  genius. — A  remarkable  interview  between  Petrarch  in  his 
first  studies,  and  his  literary  adviser. — Exhortation  .        .     79 

CHAPTER  yn. 

Of  the  irritability  of  genius. — Genius  in  society  often  in  a  state  of 
Bufiering. — Equality  of  temper  more  prevalent  among  men  of 
letters. — Of  the  occupation  of  making  a  great  name. — Anxieties 
of  the  most  successful. — Of  the  inventors. — Writers  of  learning. 
—Writers  of  taste. — Artists 98 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  spirit  of  literature  and  the  spirit  of  society. — The  inventors.^ 
Society  offers  seduction  and  not  reward  to  men  of  genius. — The 
notions  of  persons  of  fasliion  of  men  of  genius. — The  habitudes 
of  the  man  of  genius  distinct  from  those  of  the  man  of  society. — 
Study,  meditation,  and  enthusiasm,  tlie  progress  of  genius. — 
The  disagreement  between  tlie  men  of  the  world  and  tUe  literary 
character 123 

CHAPTER   IX. 

Conversations  of  men  of  genius. — Their  deficient  agroeableness 
may  result  from  qualities  which  conduce  to  their  greatness. — 
Slow-minded  men  not  the  dullest. — The  conversationists  not 
the  ablest  writers. — Their  true  excellence  :u  conversation 
consista  of  associations  with  their  pursuits        ....  139 


COXTENTS.  7 

CHAPTER  X. 

PAGB 

Literary  solitude. — Its  necessity. — Its  pleasures. — Of  visitors  by 
profession. — Its  inconveniences 149 


CHAPTER  XI. 

The  meditations  of  genius. — A  work  on  the  art  of  meditation  not 
yet  produced. — Predisposing  the  mind. — Imagination  awakens 
imagiaation. — Generating  feelings  by  music. — Slight  habits. — 
Darkness  and  silence,  by  suspending  the  exercise  of  our  senses, 
increase  the  vivacity  of  our  conceptions. — The  arts  of  memory. 
— Memory  the  foundation  of  genius. — Inventions  by  several 
to  preserve  their  own  moral  and  literary  character. — And  to 
assist  their  studies. — The  meditations  of  genius  depend  on 
habit. — Of  the  night-time. — A  day  of  meditation  should  precede 
a  day  of  composition. — Works  of  magnitude  from  slight  concep- 
tions.— Of  thoughts  never  written. — The  art  of  meditation  exer- 
cised at  all  hours  and  places. — Continuity  of  attention  the 
source  of  philosophical  discoveries. — Stillness  of  meditation  the 
first  state  of  existence  in  genius 157 


CHAPTER  XIL 

The  enthusiasm  of  genius. — A  state  of  mind  resembling  a  waking 
dream  distinct  from  reverie. — The  ideal  presence  distinguished 
from  the  real  presence. — The  senses  are  really  affected  in  the 
ideal  world,  proved  by  a  variety  of  instances. — Of  the  rapture 
or  sensation  of  deep  study  in  art,  science,  and  literature. — Of 
perturbed  feelings,  in  delirium. — In  extreme  endurance  of  atten- 
tion.— And  in  visionary  illusions. — Enthusiasts  in  literature  and 
art — Of  their  self-immolations 183 


CHAPTER  XITL 

Of  the  jealousy  of  genius. — Jealousy  often  proportioned  to  the 
degree  of  genius. — A  perpetual  fever  among  authors  and 
artists. — Instances  of  its  incredible  excess  among  brothers  and 
benefactors. — Of  a  peculiar  species,  where  the  fever  consumes 
the  sufferer,  without  its  malignancy 207 


3  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XIY. 

PAGB 

Want  of  mutual  esteem  among  men  of  genius  often  originates  in 
a  deficiency  of  analogous  ideas. — It  is  not  always  envy  or  jeal 
ousy  which  induces  men  of  genius  to  undervalue  each  other     .  213 

CHAPTER  XV. 

Self-praise  of  genius. — The  love  of  praise  instinctive  in  the  nature 
of  genius. — A  high  opinion  of  themselves  necessary  for  their 
great  designs. — The  ancients  openly  claimed  their  own  praise. — 
And  several  moderns. — An  author  knows  more  of  his  merits 
than  his  readers. — And  less  of  his  defects. — Authors  versatile 
in  their  admiration  and  their  maUgnity 211 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

The  domestic  life  of  genius. — Defects  of  great  compositions  at- 
tributed to  domestic  infelicities. — The  home  of  the  literary  char- 
acter should  be  the  abode  of  repose  and  silence. — Of  the  father. 
— Of  the  mother. — Of  family  genius. — Men  of  genius  not  more 
respected  than  other  men  in  tiieir  domestic  circle. — The  culti- 
vators of  science  and  art  do  not  meet  on  equal  terms  with 
others,  in  domestic  life. — Their  neglect  of  those  around  them. — 
Often  accused  of  imaginary  crimes 231 


CHAPTER  XVn. 

The  poverty  of  literary  men. — Poverty,  a  relative  quality. — Of  the 
poverty  of  literary  men  in  what  degree  desirable. — Extreme 
poverty. — Task-work. — Of  gratuitous  works. — A  project  to  pro- 
vide against  the  worst  state  of  poverty  among  literary  men    .  247 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

The  matrimonial  state  of  literature. — Matrimony  said  not  to  be 
well-suited  to  the  domestic  life  of  genius. — Celibacy  a  concealed 
cause  of  the  early  querulousness  of  men  of  genius. — Of  unhappy 
unions. — Not  absolutely  necessary  that  the  wife  .should  be  a 
literary  woman. — Of  the  docility  and  susceptibility  of  the  higher 
female  character. — A  picture  of  a  literary  wife         .        .        .  263 


CONTENTS.  9 

CHAPTER   XIX. 

PAGK 

Literary  friendships. — In  early  life. — DiCfcrent  from  those  of  men 
of  the  "world. — They  suffer  an  unrestrained  communication  of 
their  ideas,  and  bear  reprimands  and  exhortations. — Unity  of 
feelings. — A  sympathy  not  of  manners  but  of  feelings. — Admit 
of  dissimilar  characters. — Their  peculiar  glory. — Their  sorrow.  276 

CHAPTER  XX. 

The  literary  and  the  personal  character. — The  personal  disposi- 
tions of  an  author  may  be  the  reverse  of  those  which  appear  in 
his  writings. — Erroneous  conceptions  of  the  character  of  dis- 
tant authors. — Paradoxical  appearances  in  the  history  of  genius. 
— Why  the  character  of  the  man  may  be  opposite  to  that  of 
his  writings 287 

CHAPTER  XXL 

The  man  of  letters. — Occupies  an  intermediate  station  between 
authors  and  readers. — His  solitude  described. — Often  the  father 
of  genius. — Atticus,  a  man  of  letters  of  antiquity. — The  perfect 
character  of  a  modern  man  of  letters  exhibited  in  Peiresc. — 
Their  utility  to  authors  and  artists 298 

CHAPTER    XXn. 

Literary  old  age  stiU  learning. — Influence  of  late  studies  in  life. — 
Occupations  in  advanced  age  of  the  literary  character. — Of 
literary  men  who  have  died  at  their  studies       .        .  .313 

CHAPTER  XXni. 

Universality  of  genius. — Limited  notion  of  genius  entertained  by 
the  ancients. — Opposite  faculties  act  with  diminished  force. — 
Men  of  genius  excel  only  in  a  single  art 320 

CHAPTER    XXIV. 

Literature  an  avenue  to  glory. — An  intellectual  nobility  not  chi- 
merical, but  created  by  public  opinion. — Literary  honours  of  va- 
rious nations. — Local  associations  with  the  memory  of  the  man 
of  genius 326 


10  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXT. 

PAQB 

Influence  of  authors  ou  society,  and  of  society  on  authors. — Na- 
tional tastes  a  source  of  literary  prejudices. — True  genius  always 
the  organ  of  its  nation. — Master-writers  preserve  the  distinct 
national  character. — Genius  the  organ  of  the  state  of  the  age. — 
Causes  of  its  suppression  in  a  people. — Often  invented,  but 
neglected. — The  natural  gradations  of  genius. — Men  of  genius 
produce  their  useTulness  in  privacy. — The  public  mind  is  now 
the  creation  of  the  pubUc  writer. — Politicians  affect  to  deny  this 
principle. — Authors  stand  between  the  governors  and  the  gov- 
erned.— A  view  of  the  solitary  author  in  his  study. — They 
create  an  epoch  in  history. — Influence  of  popular  authors. — 
The  immortality  of  thought. — The  family  of  genius  illustrated 
by  their  genealogy 339 


LITERARY  MISCELLANIES. 

MisceUanists 367 

Prefaces 373 

Style 380 

Goldsmith  and  Johnson 383 

Self-characters 385 

On  reading 388 

On  habituating  ourselves  to  an  individual  pursuit         .        .        .  394 

On  novelty  in  literature 397 

Vers  de  Societe 401 

The  genius  of  MoliiJre 404 

The  sensibility  of  Racine 424 

Of  Sterne 432 

Hume,  Robertson,  and  Birch 443 

Of  voluminous  works  incomplete  by  the  deaths  of  the  authors        456 

Of  domestic  novelties  at  fir.st  condemned 462 

Domesticity;  or,  a  dissertation  on  servants     ....      474 
Printed  letters  in  the  vernacular  idiom 487 


CHARACTER  OF  JAMES  THE  FHIST. 

Advertisement 495 

Of  the  first  modern  assailants  of  the  character  of  James  I.,  Burnet, 

Boh'ngbroke  and  Pope,  Harris,  Macaulay,  and  "Walpole 499 

His  pedantry 501 

His  polemical  studies  . . . . , 503 

how  these  were  political 506 

The  Hampton-Court  conference 507 

Of  some  of  his  writings 514 

Popular  superstition  of  the  age 516 

The  King's  habits  of  life  those  of  a  man  of  letters 519 

Of  the  facility  and  copiousness  of  his  composition 522 

Of  his  eloquence 523 

Of  his  wit .    524 

Specimens  of  Ins  humour,  and  observations  on  human  life 525 

Some  evidences  of  his  sagacity  in  the  discovery  of  truth 530 

Of  his  "  Basilicon  Doron" 533 

Of  his  idea  of  a  tyrant  and  a  King 534 

Advice  to  Prince  Henry  in  the  choice  of  his  servants  and  associates  536 

Describes  the  Revolutionists  of  his  time 537 

Of  the  nobihty  of  Scotland 538 

Of  colonising 539 

Of  merchants 539 

Regulations  for  the  Prince's  manners  and  habits 540 

Of  his  idea  of  the  royal  prerogative 543 

The  lawyers'  idea  of  the  same 544 

Of  his  elevated  conception  of  the  kingly  character 548 

His  design  in  issuing  "The  Book  of  Sports"  for  the  Sabbath-day  550 

The  Sabbatarian  controversy 552 

The  motives  of  his  aversion  to  war 555 

James  acknowledges  his  dependence  on  the  Commons ;  their  con- 
duct    556 

Of  certain  scandalous  chronicles 560 

A  picture  of  the  age  from  a  manuscript  of  the  times 5G4 

Anecdotes  of  the  manners  of  the  age 569 

James  I.  discovers  the  disorders  and  discontents  of  a  peace  of 

more  than  twenty  years 578 

Tlie  King's  private  life  in  his  occasional  retirements 580 

A  detection  of  the  discrepancies  of  opinion  among  the  decriers  of 

James  1 582 

Summary  of  his  character 587 


THE 

LITERARY  CHARACTER; 

OR,    THE 

HISTORY   OF   MEN  OF   GENIUS, 

DRA.WN  FROM  THEIE  OWN  FEELINGS  AND  CONFESSIONS. 


to 


EOBEET  SOUTHET,  LL.D., 

&c.,  «&c.,  &c 


In  dedicating  this  work  to  one  of  the  most  eminent  literary  characters 
of  the  age,  I  am  experiencing  a  peculiar  gratification,  in  which,  few, 
perhaps  none,  of  my  contemporaries  can  participate ;  for  I  am  addressing 
him,  whose  earliest  effusions  attracted  my  regard,  near  half  a  century 
past ;  and  during  that  awful  interval  of  time — for  fifty  years  is  a  trial  of 
life  of  whatever  may  be  good  in  us — you  have  multiplied  your  talents, 
and  have  never  lost  a  virtue. 

When  I  turn  from  the  uninterrupted  studies  of  your  domestic  solitude 
to  our  metropolitan  authors,  the  contrast,  if  not  encouraging,  is  at  least 
extraordinary.  You  are  not  unaware  that  the  revolutions  of  Society 
have  operated  on  our  literature,  and  that  new  classes  of  readers  have 
called  forth  new  classes  of  writers.  The  causes  and  the  consequences 
of  the  present  state  of  this  fugitive  literature  might  form  an  inquiry  which 
would  include  some  of  the  important  topics  which  concern  the  Public 
Mind — but  an  inquiry  which  might  be  invidious  shall  not  disturb  a 
page  consecrated  to  the  record  of  excellence.  They  who  draw  their  in- 
spiration from  the  hour  must  not,  however,  complain  if  with  that  hour 
they  pass  away. 

I.  DISRAELL 
JUareh,  1889, 


PREFACE. 


For  the  fifth  time  I  revise  a  subject  which  has  occupied  my 
inquiries  from  early  life,  with  feelings  still  delightful,  and  an 
enthusiasm  not  wholly  diminished. 

Had  not  the  principle  upon  which  this  work  is  constructed 
occurred  to  me  in  my  youth,  the  materials  which  illustrate 
the  literary  character  could  never  have  been  brought  together. 
It  was  in  early  life  that  I  conceived  the  idea  of  pursuing  the 
history  of  genius  by  the  similar  events  which  had  occurred  to 
men  of  genius.  Searching  into  literary  history  for  the  literary 
character  formed  a  course  of  experimental  philosophy  in  which 
every  new  essay  verified  a  former  trial,  and  confirmed  a  former 
truth.  By  the  great  philosophical  principle  of  induction,  in- 
ferences were  deduced  and  results  established,  which,  however 
vague  and  doubtful  in  speculation,  are  irresistible  when  the 
appeal  is  made  to  facts  as  they  relate  to  others,  and  to 
feelings  which  must  be  decided  on  as  they  are  passing  in  our 
own  breast. 

It  is  not  to  be  inferred  from  what  I  have  here  stated  that 
I  conceive  that  any  single  man  of  genius  will  resemble  every 
man  of  genius  ;  for  not  only  man  differs  from  man,  but  varies 
from  himself  in  the  different  stages  of  human  life.  All  that 
I  assert  is,  that  every  man  of  genius  will  discover,  sooner  or 
later,  that  he  belongs  to  the  brotherhood  of  his  class,  and  that 
he  cannot  escape  from  certain  habits,  and  feelings,  and  dis- 
orders, which  arise  from  the  same  temperament  and  sym- 
pathies, and  are  the  necessary  consequence  of  occupying  the 


16  PREFACE. 

same  position,  and  passing  through  the  same  moral  existence. 
Whenever  we  compare  men  of  genius  with  each  other,  the 
history  of  those  who  are  no  more  will  serve  as  a  perpetual 
commentary  on  our  contemporaries.  There  are,  indeed,  secret 
feelings  which  their  prudence  conceals,  or  their  fears  obscure, 
or  their  modesty  shrinks  from,  or  their  pride  rejects ;  but  I 
have  sometimes  imagined  that  I  have  held  the  clue  as  they 
have  lost  themselves  in  their  own  labyrinth.  I  know  that 
many,  and  some  of  great  celebrity,  have  sympathised  with  the 
feelings  which  inspired  these  volumes ;  nor,  while  I  have 
elucidated  the  idiosyncrasy  of  genius,  have  I  less  studied  the 
habits  and  characteristics  of  the  lovers  of  litwature. 

It  has  been  considered  that  the  subject  of  this  work  might 
have  been  treated  with  more  depth  of  metaphysical  disquisition ; 
and  there  has  since  appeared  an  attempt  to  combine  with  this 
investigation  the  medical  science.  A  work,  however,  should 
be  judged  by  its  design,  and  its  execution,  and  not  by  any 
preconceived  notion  of  what  it  ought  to  be  according  to  the 
critic,  rather  than  the  author.  The  nature  of  this  work  is 
dramatic  rather  than  metaphysical.  It  oflers  a  narration 
or  a  description ;  a  conversation  or  a  monologue  ;  an  incident 
or  a  scene. 

Perhaps  I  have  sometimes  too  warmly  apologised  for  the 
infirmities  of  men  of  genius.  From  others  we  may  hourly 
learn  to  treat  with  levity  the  man  of  genius  because  he  is 
only  such.  Perhaps  also  I  may  have  been  too  fond  of  the 
subject,  which  has  been  for  me  an  old  and  a  favourite  one — I 
may  have  exalted  the  literary  character  beyond  the  scale  by 
which  society  is  willing  to  fix  it.  Yet  what  is  this  Society, 
80  omnipotent,  so  all  judicial?  The  society  of  to-day  was 
not  the  society  of  yesterday.  Its  feelings,  its  thoughts,  its 
manners,  its  rights,  its  wishes,  and  its  wants,  are  ditferent 
and  are  changed  :  alike  changed  or  alike  created  by  those  very 
literary  characters  whom  it  rarely  comprehends  and  often 
would  despise.     Let  us  no  longer  look  upon  this  retired  and 


PREFACE.  17 

peculiar  class  as  useless  members  of  our  busy  race.  There 
are  mental  as  well  as  material  labourers.  The  first  are  not 
less  necessary  ;  and  as  they  are  much  rarer,  so  are  they  more 
precious.  These  are  they  whose  "  published  labours  "  have 
benefited  mankind — these  are  they  whose  thoughts  can  alone 
rear  that  beautiful  fabric  of  social  life,  which  it  is  the  object 
of  all  good  men  to  elevate  or  to  support.  To  discover  truth 
and  to  maintain  it, — -to  develope  the  powers,  to  regulate  the 
passions,  to  ascertain  the  privileges  of  man, — such  have  ever 
been,  and  such  ever  ought  to  be,  the  labours  of  Authors  ! 
Whatever  we  enjoy  of  political  and  private  happiness,  our 
most  necessary  knowledge  as  well  as  our  most  refined  plea- 
sures, are  alike  owing  to  this  class  of  men  ;  and  of  these,  some 
for  glory,  and  often  from  benevolence,  have  shut  themselves 
out  from  the  very  beings  whom  they  love,  and  for  whom  they 
labour. 

Upwards  of  forty  years  have  elapsed  since,  composed  in  a 
distant  county,  and  printed  at  a  provincial  press,  I  published 
"  An  Essay  on  the  Manners  and  Genius  of  the  Literary  Char 
acter."  To  my  own  habitual  and  inherent  defects  were 
superadded  those  of  my  youth.  The  crude  production  was, 
however,  not  ill  received,  for  the  edition  disappeared,  and  the 
subject  was  found  more  interesting  than  the  writer. 

During  a  long  interval  of  twenty  years,  this  little  work  was 
often  recalled  to  my  recollection  by  several,  and  by  some  who 
have  since  obtained  celebrity.  They  imagined  that  their  at- 
tachment to  literary  pursuits  had  been  strengthened  even  by 
so  weak  an  effort.  An  extraordinary  circumstance  concurred 
with  these  opinions.  A  copy  accidentally  fell  into  my  hands 
which  had  formerly  belonged  to  the  great  poetical  genius  of 
our  times ;  and  the  singular  fact,  that  it  had  been  more  than 
once  read  by  him,  and  twice  in  two  subsequent  years  at 
Athens,  in  1810  and  1811,  instantly  convinced  me  that  the 
volume  deserved  my  renewed  attention. 

It  was  with  these  feelings  that  I  was  again  ftrcngly  at- 
2 


18  PRFFACE. 

tracted  to  a  subject  from  which,  indeed,  during  the  course  of 
a  studious  life,  it  had  never  been  long  diverted.  The  conse- 
quence of  m}'  labours  was  the  publication,  in  1818,  of  an 
octavo  volume,  under  the  title  of  "  The  Literary  Character, 
illustrated  by  the  History  of  Men  of  Genius,  drawn  from  their 
own  feelings  and  confessions." 

In  the  preface  to  this  edition,  in  mentioning  the  fact 
respecting  Lord  Byron,  which  had  been  the  immediate  cause 
of  its  publication,  I  added  these  words :  "  I  tell  this  fact 
assuredly  not  from  any  little  vanity  which  it  may  appear  to 
betray ; — for  the  truth  is,  were  I  not  as  liberal  and  as  candid 
in  respect  to  my  own  productions,  as  I  hope  I  am  to  others, 
I  could  not  have  been  gratified  by  the  present  circumstance ; 
for  the  marginal  notes  of  the  noble  author  convey  no  flattery  ; 
— but  amidst  their  pungency,  and  sometimes  their  truth,  the 
circumstance  that  a  man  of  genius  could  reperuse  this  slight 
effusion  at  two  different  periods  of  his  life,  was  a  suflBcient 
authority,  at  least  for  an  author,  to  return  it  once  more  to 
the  anvil." 

Some  time  after  the  publication  of  this  edition  of  "  The 
Literary  Character,"  which  was  in  fact  a  new  work,  I  was 
shown,  through  the  kindness  of  an  English  gentleman  lately 
returned  from  Italy,  a  copy  of  it,  which  had  been  given  to 
him  by  Lord  Byron,  and  which  again  contained  marginal 
notes  by  the  noble  author.  These  were  peculiarly  interesting, 
and  were  chiefly  occasioned  by  observations  on  his  character, 
which  appeared  in  the  work. 

In  1822  I  published  a  new  edition  of  this  work,  greatly 
enlarged,  and  in  two  volumes.  I  took  this  opportunity  of 
inserting  the  manuscript  Notes  of  Lord  Byron,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  one,  vviiich,  however  characteristic  of  the  amiable 
feelings  of  the  noble  poet,  and  however  gratifying  to  my 
own,  I  had  no  wish  to  obtrude  on  the  notice  of  the  public* 

♦  As  everything  connected  with  the  reading  of  a  mind  like  Lord  Byron's  is 
Interesting  to  the  philosophical  inquirer,  this  note  may  now  he  preserved.     On 


PREFACE.  19 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  this  third  edition,  I  received 
the  following  letter  from  his  lordship  : 

"  MONTENERO,    ViLLA    DUPDY,    NEAR    LEGHORN,    June  10,  1822. 

"  Deab  Sib, — If  you  will  permit  me  to  call  you  so, — I 
liad  some  time  ago  taken  up  my  pen  at  Pisa,  to  thank  you  for 
the  present  of  your  new  edition  of  the  'Literary  Character,' 
which  has  often  been  to  me  a  consolation,  and  always  a 
pleasure.  I  was  interrupted,  however,  partly  by  business, 
and  partly  by  vexation  of  different  kinds, — for  I  have  not  very 
long  ago  lost  a  child  by  fever,  and  I  have  had  a  good  deal 
of  petty  trouble  with  the  laws  of  this  lawless  country,  on 
account  of  the  prosecution  of  a  servant  for  an  attack  upon  a 
cowardly  scoundrel  of  a  dragoon,  who  drew  his  sword  upon 
some  unarmed  Englishmen,  and  whom  I  had  done  the  honcwr 
to  mistake  for  an  officer,  and  to  treat  like  a  gentleman.  Ho 
turned  out  to  be  neither, — like  many  other  with  medals,  and  in 
uniform ;  but  he  paid  for  his  brutality  with  a  severe  and  danger- 
ous wound,  inflicted  by  nobody  knows  whom,  for,  of  three 
suspected,  and  two  arrested,  they  have  been  able  to  identify 
neither;  which  is  strange,  since  be  was  wounded  in  the  pres- 
ence of  thousands,  in  a  public  street,  during  a  feast-day  and  full 
promenade.  But  to  return  to  things  more  analogous  to  the 
'  Literary  Character,'  I  wish  to  say,  that  had  I  known  that  the 
book  was  to  fall  into  your  hands,  or  that  the  MS.  notes  you 
have  thought  worthy  of  publication  would  have  attracted  your 
attention,  I  would  have  made  them  more  copious,  and  perhaps 
not  so  careless. 

"I  really  cannot  know  whether  I  am,  or  am  not,  the  genius 
you  are  pleased  to  call  me, — but  I  am  very  willing  to  put  up 
with  the  mistake,  if  it  be  one.  It  is  a  title  dearly  enough 
bought  by  most  men,  to  render  it  endurable,  even  when  not 
quite  clearly  made  out,  which  it  never  can  be,  till  the  Posterity, 

that  passage  of  the  Preface  of  the  second  Edition  which  I  have  alrea-ij-  quoted,  his 
Lordship  was  ihus  pleased  to  write : 

"I  was  wrong,  but  I  was  young  and  petulant,  and  probably  wrote  down 
any  thing,  little  thinking  that  those  observations  would  be  betrayed  to  the  author, 
whose  abilities  I  have  always  respected,  and  whose  works  in  general  I  have  read 
oftener  than  perhaps  those  of  any  English  author  whatever,  except  such  as  trea 
of  Turkey." 


20  PREFACE. 

whose  decisions  are  merely  dreams  to  ourselves,  have  sanctioned 
or  denied  it,  while  it  can  touch  us  no  further. 

"  Mr.  Murray  is  in  possession  of  a  MS.  memoir  of  mine  (not 
to  be  published  till  I  am  in  my  grave),  which,  strange  as  it  may 
seem,  I  never  read  over  since  it  was  written,  and  have  no  desire  to 
read  over  again.  In  it  I  have  told  what,  as  far  as  I  know,  is  the 
truth — not  the  whole  truth — for  if  I  had  done  so,  I  must  have 
involved  much  private,  and  some  dissipated  history :  but,  never- 
theless, nothing  but  truth,  as  far  as  regard  for  others  permitted 
it  to  appear. 

"I  do  not  know  whether  you  have  seen  those  MSS. ;  but,  as 
you  are  curious  in  such  things  as  relate  to  the  human  mind,  I 
should  feel  gratified  if  you  had,  I  also  sent  him  (Murray),  a 
few  days  since,  a  Common-place  Book,  by  my  friend  Lord  Clare, 
containing  a  few  things,  which  may  perhaps  aid  his  publication 
in  case  of  his  surviving  me.  If  there  are  any  questions  which 
you  would  like  to  ask  me,  as  connected  with  your  philosophy 
of  the  literary  mind  (^y  mine  be  a  literary  mind),  I  will  answer 
them  fairly,  or  give  a  reason  for  not^  good — bad — or  indifferent. 
At  present,  I  am  paying  the  penalty  of  having  helped  to  spoil 
the  public  taste ;  for,  as  long  as  I  wrote  in  the  false  exaggerated 
style  of  youth,  and  the  times  in  which  we  live,  they  applauded 
me  to  the  very  echo ;  and  within  these  few  years,  when  I  have 
endeavoured  at  better  things,  and  written  what  I  suspect  to  have 
the  principle  of  duration  in  it :  the  Church,  the  Chancellor,  and 
all  men,  even  to  my  grand  patron,  Francis  Jeffrey,  Esq.,  of  the 
Edinburgh  Review^  have  risen  up  against  me,  and  my  later 
publications.  Such  is  Truth  !  men  dare  not  look  her  in  the  face, 
except  by  degrees ;  they  mistake  her  for  a  Gorgon,  instead  of 
knowing  her  to  be  Minerva.  I  do  not  mean  to  apply  this 
mythological  simile  to  my  own  endeavours,  but  I  have  only  to 
turn  over  a  few  pages  of  your  volumes  to  find  innumerable  and 
far  more  illustrious  instances.  It  is  lucky  that  I  am  of  a  temper 
not  to  be  easily  turned  aside,  though  by  no  means  difficult  to 
irritate.  But  I  am  making  a  dissertation,  instead  of  writing  a 
letter.  I  write  to  you  from  the  Villa  Dupuy,  near  Leghorn, 
with  the  islands  of  Elba  and  Corsica  visible  from  my  balcony, 
and  ray  old  friend  the  Mediterranean  rolling  blue  at  my  feet. 
As  long  as  I  retain  my  feeling  and  my  passion  for  Nature,  I  can 


PREFACE.  21 

partly  soften  or  subdue  my  other  passions,  and  resist  or  endure 
those  of  others. 

"  I  have  the  honour  to  be,  truly, 

"  Your  obliged  and  faithful  servant, 

"  Noel  Bteoit. 

"To  I.  D'ISKAELI,  Esq." 

The  ill-starred  expedition  to  Greece  followed  this  letter. 

This  work,  conceived  in  youth,  executed  by  the  research  of 
manhood,  and  associated  with  the  noblest  feelings  of  our 
nature,  is  an  humble  but  fervent  tribute,  offered  to  the 
memory  of  those  Master  Spirits  from  whose  labours,  as  Burkk 
eloquently  describes,  "  their  country  receives  permanent 
service :  those  who  know  how  to  make  the  silence  of  their 
closets  more  beneficial  to  the  world  than  all  the  noise  and 
bustle  of  courts,  senates,  and  camps.''' 


THE 

LITEEAET  OHARAOTER 


CHAPTER    I. 

Of  Literary  Characters,  and  of  the  Lovers  of  Literature  and  Art. 

DIFFUSED  over  enlightened  Europe,  an  order  of  men 
has  arisen,  who,  uninfluenced  by  the  interests  or  the 
passions  which  give  an  impulse  to  the  other  classes  of 
society,  are  connected  by  the  secret  links  of  congenial 
pursuits,  and,  insensibly  to  themselves,  are  combining  in 
the  same  common  labours,  and  participating  in  the  same 
divided  glory.  In  the  metropolitan  cities  of  Europe  the 
same  authors  are  now  read,  and  the  same  opinions 
become  established :  the  Englishman  is  familiar  with 
Machiavel  and  Montesquieu;  the  Italian  and  the  French- 
man with  Bacon  and  Locke  ;  and  the  same  smiles  and 
tears  are  awakened  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames,  of  the 
Seine,  or  of  the  Guadalquivii",  by  Shakspeare,  Moliere, 
and  Cervantes — 

Contemporains  de  tous  les  hommes, 
Et  citoyens  de  tous  les  lieux. 

A  khan  of  Tartary  admired  the  wit  of  Moliere,  and 
discovered  the  Tartuffe  in  the  Crimea;  and  had  this 
ingenious  sovereign  survived  the  translation  which  he 
ordered,  the  immortal  labour  of  the  comic  satirist  of 
France  mig-ht  have  laid  the  foundation  of  good  taste 


24  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

even  among  the  Turks  and  the  Tartars.  We  see  the 
Italian  Pignotti  referring  to  the  opinion  of  an  English 
critic,  Lord  Bolingbroke,  for  decisive  authority  on  the 
peculiar  characteristics  of  the  historian  Guicciardini :  the 
German  Schlegel  writes  on  our  Shakspeare  like  a  patriot ; 
and  while  the  Italians  admire  the  noble  scenes  which  our 
Flaxman  has  drawn  from  their  great  poet,  they  have 
rejected  the  feeble  attempts  of  their  native  artists.  Such 
is  the  wide  and  the  perpetual  influence  of  this  living 
intercourse  of  literary  minds. 

Scarcely  have  two  centuries  elapsed  since  the  litera- 
ture of  every  nation  was  limited  to  its  fatherland,  and 
men  of  genius  long  could  only  hope  for  the  spread  of 
their  fame  in  the  single  language  of  ancient  Rome ; 
which  for  them  had  ceased  to  be  natural,  and  could 
never  be  popular.  It  was  in  the  intercourse  of  the 
wealth,  the  power,  and  the  novel  arts  of  the  nations  of 
Europe,  that  they  learned  each  other's  languages;  and 
they  discovered  that,  however  their  manners  varied  as 
they  arose  from  their  different  customs,  they  participated 
in  the  same  intellectual  faculties,  suffered  from  the  same 
wants,  and  were  alive  to  the  same  pleasures ;  they  per- 
ceived that  there  were  no  conventional  fashions,  nor 
national  distinctions,  in  abstract  truths  and  fundamental 
knowledge.  A  new  spirit  seems  to  bring  them  nearer  to 
each  other:  and,  as  if  literary  Europe  were  intent  to 
form  but  one  people  out  of  the  populace  of  mankind, 
they  offer  their  reciprocal  labours ;  they  pledge  to  each 
other  the  same  opinions ;  and  that  knowledge  which, 
like  a  small  river,  takes  its  source  from  one  spot,  at 
length  mingles  with  the  ocean-stream  common  to  them 
all. 

But  those  who  stand  connected  with  this  literary  com- 
munity are  not  always  sensible  of  the  kindred  alliance ; 
even  a  genius  of  tlie  first  order  has  not  always  been 
aware  that  he  is  tlie  founder  of  a  society,  and  that  there 


SmiLAEITY  OF  LITERARY  MEN.  25 

will  ever  "be  a  brotherhood  where  there  is  a  father- 
genius. 

These  literary  characters  are  partially,  and  with  a 
melancholy  colouring,  exhibited  by  Johnson.  "  To  talk 
in  private,  to  think  in  solitude,  to  inquire  or  to  answer 
inquiries,  is  the  business  of  a  scholar.  He  wanders  about 
the  world  without  pomp  or  terror ;  and  is  neither  known 
nor  valued  but  by  men  like  himself"  Thus  thought  this 
great  writer  during  those  sad  probationary  years  of 
genius  when 

Slow  rises  worth,  by  poverty  depress'd ; 

not  yet  conscious  that  he  himself  was  devoting  his  days 
to  cast  the  minds  of  his  contemporaries  and  of  the  suc- 
ceeding age  in  the  mighty  mould  of  his  own ;  Johnson 
was  of  that  order  of  men  whose  individual  genius 
becomes  that  of  a  people.  A  prouder  conception  rose 
in  the  majestic  mind  of  Milton,  of "  that  lasting  fame 
and  perpetuity  of  praise  which  God  and  good  men  have 
consented  shall  be  the  reward  of  those  whose  published 
LABOURS  advanced  the  good  of  mankind." 

The  LITERARY  CHARACTER  is  a  denomination  which, 
however  vague,  defines  the  pursuits  of  the  individual, 
and  separates  him  from  other  professions,  although  it 
frequently  occurs  that  he  is  himself  a  member  of  one. 
Professional  characters  are  modified  by  the  change  of 
manners,  and  are  usually  national;  while  the  literary 
character,  from  the  objects  in  which  it  concerns  itself, 
retains  a  more  permanent,  and  necessarily  a  more 
independent  nature. 

Formed  by  the  same  habits,  and  influenced  by  the 
same  motives,  notwithstanding  the  contrast  of  talents 
and  tempers,  and  the  remoteness  of  times  and  places,  the 
literary  character  has  ever  preserved  among  its  followers 
the  most  striking  family  resemblance.  The  passion  for 
study,  the  delight  in  books,  the  desire  of  solitude  and 


26  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

celebrity,  the  obstructions  of  human  life,  the  character 
of  their  pursuits,  the  uniformity  of  their  habits,  the 
triumphs  and  the  disappointments  of  literary  glory,  were 
as  truly  described  by  Cicero  and  the  younger  Pliny 
as  by  Petrarch  and  Erasmus,  and  as  they  have  been 
by  Hume  and  Gibbon.  And  this  similarity,  too,  may 
equally  be  remai'ked  with  respect  to  that  noble  passion 
of  the  lovers  of  literature  and  of  art  for  collecting  together 
their  mingled  treasures ;  a  thirst  which  was  as  insatiable  in 
Atticus  and  Peii-esc  as  in  our  Cracherode  and  Townley.* 
We  trace  the  feelings  of  our  literary  contemporaries  in 
all  ages,  and  among  every  people  who  have  ranked  with 
nations  far  advanced  in  civilization ;  for  among  these  may 
be  equally  observed  both  the  great  artificers  of  knowl- 
edge and  those  who  preserve  unbroken  the  vast  chain  of 
human  acquisitions.  The  one  have  stamped  the  images 
of  their  minds  on  their  works,  and  the  others  have 
preserved  the  circulation  of  this  intellectual  coinage,  this 

Gold  of  the  dead, 
"Which  Time  does  still  disperse,  but  not  devour. 

*  The  Rev.  C.  M.  Cracherode  bequeathed  at  his  death,  in  IT 99,  to 
the  British  Museum,  the  large  collection  of  literature,  art,  and  virtu  he 
had  employed  an  industrious  life  in  collecting.  His  books  numbered 
nearly  4500  volumes,  many  of  great  rarity  and  value.  His  drawings, 
many  by  early  Italian  masters,  and  all  rare  or  curious,  were  de- 
posited in  the  print-room  of  the  same  establishment;  his  antiquities, 
&c.,  were  in  a  similar  way  added  to  the  other  departments.  The 
"  Townley  Gallery  "  of  classic  sculpture  was  purchased  of  his  executors 
by  Government  for  28,2001.  It  had  been  collected  with  singular  taste 
and  judgment,  as  well  as  some  amount  of  good  fortune  also ;  Townley 
resided  at  Rome  during  the  researches  on  the  site  of  Hadrian's  Villa  at 
Tivoli ;  and  he  had  for  aid.^  and  advisers  Sir  WQliam  Hamilton,  Gavin 
Hamilton,  and  other  active  collectors;  and  was  the  friend  and  corre« 
epondent  of  D'Hancarville  and  Winckelmann. — Ed. 


ADVERSARIES  OF  LITERATURE.  27 


CHAPTER    II. 

Of  the  Adversaries  of  Literary  Men  among  themselves. — Matter-of-fact 
Men,  and  Men  of  Wit. — The  Political  Economists. — Of  those  who 
abandon  their  studies. — Men  in  ofiSce. — The  arbiters  of  public  opin- 
ion.— Those  who  treat  the  pursuits  of  literature  with  levity. 

rrHE  pursuits  of  literature  have  been  openly  or  insidi- 
-L  ously  lowered  by  those  literary  men  who,  from 
motives  not  always  difficult  to  penetrate,  are  eager  to 
confound  the  ranks  in  the  republic  of  letters,  maliciously 
conferring  the  honours  of  authorship  on  that  "Ten 
Thousand  "  whose  recent  list  is  not  so  much  a  muster-roll 
of  heroes  as  a  table  of  population.* 

Matter-of-fact  men,  or  men  of  knowledge,  and  men  of 
wit  and  taste,  were  long  inimical  to  each  other's  pursuits,  f 
The  Royal  Society  in  its  origin  could  hardly  support 
itself  against  the  ludicrous  attacks  of  literary  men,J  and 

*  "We  have  a  Dictionary  of  "  Ten  Thousand  living  Authors "  of 
our  own  nation.  The  alphabet  is  fatal  by  its  juxtapositions.  In 
France,  before  the  Revolution,  they  counted  about  twenty  thousand 
writers.  When  David  would  have  his  people  numbered,  Joab  asked, 
"  Why  doth  my  lord  delight  in  this  ?"  In  political  economy,  the 
population  returns  may  be  useful,  provided  they  be  correct ;  but  iu 
the  literary  republic,  its  numerical  force  diminishes  the  strength  of 
the  empire.  "There  you  are  numbered,  we  had  rather  you  were 
weighed."  Put  aside  the  puling  infants  of  literature,  of  whom  such 
a  mortality  occurs  in  its  nurseries ;  such  as  the  writers  of  the  single 
sermon,  the  single  law-tract,  the  single  medical  dissertation,  &c. ;  all 
writers  whose  subject  is  single,  without  being  singular;  count  for 
nothing  the  inefficient  mob  of  mediocrists  ;  and  strike  out  our  hterary 
charlatans ;  and  then  our  alphabet  of  men  of  genius  will  not  consist,  as 
it  now  does,  of  the  four-and-twenty  letters. 

f  The  cause  is  developed  in  the  chapter  on  "  Want  of  Mutual 
Esteem." 

I  See  Butler,  in  his  "  Elephant  in  the  Moon."  South,  in  his  oration 
at  the  opening  of  the  theatre  at  Oxford,  passed  this  bitter  sarcasm 
on  the  naturalists, — ^' Mirafitur  nihil  nisi  pulices,  pediculos — else  ipsos;" 


28  LITERARY   CTTARACTER. 

the  Antiquarian  Society  has  afforded  them  amusement.* 
Such  partial  views  have  ceased  to  contract  the  under- 
standing. Science  yields  a  new  substance  to  literature; 
literature  combines  new  associations  for  the  votaries  of 
knowledge.  There  is  no  subject  in  nature,  and  in  the 
history  of  man,  which  will  not  associate  with  our  feelings 
and  our  curiosity,  whenever  genius  extends  its  awaken- 
ing hand.  The  antiquary,  the  naturalist,  the  architect, 
the  chemist,  and  even  writers  on  medical  topics,  have  in 
our  days  asserted  their  claims,  and  discovered  their  long- 
interrupted  relationship  with  the  great  family  of  genius 
and  literature. 

A  new  race  of  jargonists,  the  barbarous  metaphysi- 
cians of  political  economy,  have  struck  at  the  essential 
existence  of  the  productions  of  genius  in  literature  and 
art ;  for,  appreciating  them  by  their  own  standard,  they 
have  miserably  degraded  the  professors.  Absorbed  in 
the  contemplation  of  material  objects,  and  rejecting 
whatever  does  not  enter  into  their  own  restricted  notion 
of  "  utility,"  these  cold  arithmetical  seers,  with  nothing 
but  millions  in  their  imagination,  and  whose  choicest 
works  of  art  are  spinning-jennies,  have  valued  the  intel- 
lectual tasks  of  the  library  and  the  studio  by  "  the  de- 

— nothing  they  admire  but  fleas,  lice,  and  themselves  I  The  illustrious 
Sloane  endured  a  long  persecution  from  the  bantering  humour  of  Dr. 
King.  One  of  the  most  amusing  declaimers  against  what  he  calls  les 
Sciences  des  faux  Sravans  is  Father  Malebranche;  he  is  far  more 
severe  than  Cornelius  Agrippa,  and  he  long  preceded  Rousseau,  so 
famous  for  his  invective  against  the  sciences.  The  seventh  chapter 
of  his  fourth  boolc  is  an  inimitable  satire.  "The  principal  excuse," 
says  he,  "  which  engages  men  in  fake  studies,  is,  that  they  have  at- 
tached tlie  idea  of  learned  whore  they  sliould  not."  Astronomy,  anti- 
quarianism,  history,  ancient  poetry,  and  natural  history,  are  all  mowed 
down  by  }iis  metaphysical  scythe.  When  we  become  acquainted  with 
the  ideci  Fatlier  Malobraucho  attaches  to  the  term  learned,  we  under- 
stand him — and  wo  smile. 

*  Scse  the  cliaptor  on  "  Puck  tiie  Commentator,"  in  the  "  Curiosities 
of  Literature,"  vol.  iii. ;  also  p.  304  of  the  same  volume. 


ADYERSARIES   OF  LITERATURE.  29 

tnand  and  the  supply."  They  have  sunk  these  pursuits 
into  the  class  of  what  they  term  "  unproductive  labour ;" 
and  by  another  result  of  their  line  and  level  system,  men 
of  letters,  with  some  other  important  characters,  are  forced 
down  into  the  class  "  of  buffoons,  singers,  opera-dancers," 
&c.  In  a  system  of  political  economy  it  has  been  dis- 
covered that  "  that  improsperous  race  of  men,  called  men 
of  letters,  must  necessarily  occupy  their  present  forlorn 
state  in  society  much  as  formerly,  when  a  scholar  and  a  beg- 
gar seem  to  have  been  terms  very  nearly  synonymous."* 
In  their  commercial,  agricultural,  and  manufacturing  view 
of  human  nature,  addressing  society  by  its  most  pressing 
wants  and  its  coarsest  feelings,  these  theorists  limit  the 
moral  and  physical  existence  of  man  by  speculative 
tables  of  population,  planing  and  levelling  society  down 
in  their  carpentry  of  human  nature.  They  would  yoke 
and  harness  the  loftier  spirits  to  one  common  and  vulgar 
destination.  Man  is  considered  only  as  he  wheels  on  the 
the  wharf,  or  as  he  spins  in  the  factory ;  but  man,  as  a 
recluse  being  of  meditation,  or  impelled  to  action  by 
more  generous  passions,  has  been  struck  out  of  the 
system  of  our  political  economists.  It  is,  however,  only 
among  their  "  unproductive  labourers  "  that  we  shall  find 
those  men  of  leisure,  whose  habitual  pursuits  are  con- 
sumed in  the  development  of  thought  and  the  gradual 
ascessions  of  knowledge ;  those  men  of  whom  the  sage 
of  Judea  declares,  that  "  It  is  he  who  hath  little  business 
who  shall  become  wise :  how  can  he  get  "wisdom  that 
holdeth  the  plough,  and  whose  talk  is  of  bullocks  ?  But 
THEY," — the  men  of  leisure  and  study, — "  will  maintain 
THE  STATE  OP  THE  WORLD  !"  The  prosperity  and  the  hap- 
piness of  a  people  include  something  more  evident  and 
more  permanent  than  "  the  Wealth  of  a  Nation."  f 

*  "Wealth  of  Nations,"  i.  182. 

\  Since  this  murmur  has  been  uttered  against  the  degrading  views 
of  some  of  those  theorists,  it  afforded  me  pleasure  to  observe  that  Mr 


30  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

There  is  a  more  formidable  class  of  men  of  genius  who 
are  heartless  to  the  interests  of  literature.  Like  Corne- 
lius Agrippa,  who  wrote  on  "  the  vanity  of  the  arts  and 
sciences,"  many  of  these  are  only  tracing  in  the  arts 
which  they  have  abandoned  their  own  inconstant 
tempers,  their  feeble  tastes,  and  their  disordered  judg- 
ments. But,  with  others  of  this  class,  study  has  usually 
served  as  the  instrument,  not  as  the  object,  of  their 
ascent ;  it  was  the  ladder  which  they  once  climbed,  but 
it  was  not  the  eastern  star  which  guided  and  inspired. 
Such  literary  characters  were  Warburton,*  Watson,  and 
Wilkes,  who  abandoned  their  studies  when  their  studies 
had  served  a  purpose. 

Watson  gave  up  his  pursuits  in  chemistry  the  instant 
he  obtained  their  limited  reward,  and  the  laboratory 
closed  when  the  professorship  was  instituted.  Such  was 
the  penurious  love  he  bore  for  the  science  which  he  had 

Malthus  has  fully  sanctioned  its  justness.  On  this  head,  at  least,  Mr. 
Malthus  has  amply  confuted  his  stubborn  and  tasteless  brothera. 
Alluding  to  the  productions  of  genius,  this  writer  observes,  that,  "to 
estimate  the  value  of  Newton's  discoveries,  or  the  delight  communi- 
cated by  Shakspeare  and  Milton,  by  the  price  at  which  their  works 
have  sold,  would  be  but  a  poor  measure  of  the  degree  in  which  they 
have  elevated  and  enchanted  their  country." — Principles  of  Pol.  Econ., 
p.  48.  And  hence  he  acknowledges,  that  ^'some  unproductive  labour  is 
of  much  more  use  and  importance  than  productive  labour,  but  is  incapa- 
ble of  being  the  subject  of  the  gross  calculations  which  relate  to 
national  wealth ;  contriljuting  to  other  sources  of  happiness  besides 
those  which  are  derived  fiom  matter."  Political  economists  would 
have  smiled  with  contempt  on  the  querulous  Porson,  who  once 
observed,  that  "  it  seemed  to  him  very  hard,  that  with  all  his  criticaJ 
knowledge  of  Greek,  he  could  not  get  a  hundred  pounds."  They 
would  h;ive  demonstrated  to  tlie  learned  Grecian,  that  this  was  just  &a 
it  ought  to  bo ;  the  same  occurrence  had  even  happened  to  Homer  in 
his  own  country,  where  Greek  ought  to  have  fetched  a  higher  price 
than  in  England ;  but,  that  both  might  have  obtained  this  hundred 
pormds,  had  the  Grecian  bard  and  the  Greek  professor  been  employed 
at  the  same  stocking-frame  together,  instead  of  the  "Iliad." 

*  For  a  full  disquisition  of  the  character  and  career  of  Warburton, 
see  the  essay  in  "  Quarrels  of  Authors  " 


WILKES.  31 

adopted,  that  the  extraordinary  discoveries  of  thirty 
years  subsequent  to  his  own  jBrst  essays  could  never 
excite  even  an  idle  inquiry.  He  tells  us  that  he  preferred 
"  his  larches  to  his  laurels :"  the  wretched  jingle  ex- 
pressed the  mere  worldliness  that  dictated  it.  In  the 
same  spirit  of  calculation  with  which  he  had  at  first 
embraced  science  and  literature,  he  abandoned  them ; 
and  his  ingenuous  confession  is  a  memorable  example  of 
that  egotistic  pride  which  beti-ayed  in  the  literary  charac- 
ter the  creature  of  selfism  and  political  ambition. 

We  are  accustomed  to  consider  Wilkes  merely  as  a 
political  adventurer,  and  it  may  surprise  to  find  this 
"  city  chamberlain "  ranked  among  professed  literary 
characters:  yet  in  his  variable  life  there  was  a  period 
when  he  cherished  the  aspirations  of  a  votary.  Once  he 
desired  Lloyd  to  announce  the  edition  of  Churchill, 
which  he  designed  to  enrich  by  a  commentary;  and 
his  correspondence  on  this  subject,  which  has  never 
appeared,  would,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  aiford  a  variety 
of  hints  and  communications.  Wilkes  was  then  warmed 
by  literary  glory ;  for  on  his  retirement  into  Italy,  he 
declared,  "  I  mean  to  give  myself  entirely  to  our  friend's 
work,  and  to  my  History  of  England.  I  wish  to  equal 
the  dignity  of  Livy :  I  am  sure  the  greatness  and  ma- 
jesty of  our  nation  demand  an  historian  equal  to  him." 
They  who  have  only  heard  of  the  intriguing  demagogue, 
and  witnessed  the  last  days  of  the  used  voluptuary,  may 
hardly  imagine  that  Wilkes  had  ever  cherished  such 
elevated  projects  ;  but  mob-politics  made  this  adventur- 
er's fortune,  which  fell  to  the  lot  of  an  epicurean :  and 
the  literary  glory  he  once  sought  he  Uved  to  ridicule,  in 
the  immortal  diligence  of  Lord  Chatham  and  of  Gibbon. 
Dissolving  life  away,  and  consuming  all  his  feelings  on 
himself,  Wilkes  left  his  nearest  relatives  what  he  left  the 
world — the  memory  of  an  anti-social  being  !  This  wit, 
who  has  bequeathed  to  us  no  wit ;  this  man  of  genius, 


32  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

who  has  formed  no  work  of  genius ;  this  bold  advocate 
for  popular  freedom,  who  sunk  his  patriotism  in  the 
chamberlainship  ;  was  indeed  desirous  of  leaving  behind 
him  some  trace  of  the  life  of  an  escroc  in  a  piece  of  auto- 
biography, which,  for  the  benefit  of  the  world,  has  been 
thrown  to  the  flames. 

Men  who  have  ascended  into  ofiice  through  its  gra- 
dations, or  have  been  thrown  upwards  by  accident,  are 
apt  to  view  others  in  a  cloud  of  passions  and  politics. 
They  who  once  commanded  us  by  their  eloquence,  come 
at  length  to  suspect  the  eloquent ;  and  in  their  "  pride  of 
ofiice "  would  now  drive  us  by  that  single  force  of  des- 
potism which  is  the  corruption  of  political  power.  Our 
late  great  Minister,  Pitt,  has  been  reproached  even  by  his 
friends  for  the  contemptuous  indifierence  with  which  he 
treated  literary  men.  Perbaps  Burke  himself,  long  a 
literary  character,  might  incur  some  portion  of  this 
censure,  by  involving  the  character  itself  in  the  odium  of 
a  monstrous  political  sect.  These  political  characters 
resemble  Adrian  VI.,  who  obtaining  the  tiara  as  the 
reward  of  his  studies,  afterwards  persecuted  literary 
men,  and,  say  the  Italians,  dreaded  lest  his  brothers 
might  shake  the  Pontificate  itself.* 

Worst  fares  it  with  authors  when  minds  of  this  cast 
become  the  arbiters  of  public  opinion ;  for  the  greatest 
of  writers  may  unquestionably  be  forced  into  ridiculous 

*  It  has  been  suspected  that  Adrian  VI.  has  been  caluminated,  for 
that  this  pontiff  was  only  too  sudden  to  begin  the  reform  he  medi- 
tated. But  Adrian  VI.  was  a  scholastic  whose  austerity  turned  away 
with  contempt  from  all  ancient  art,  and  was  no  brother  to  contemporary 
genius.  Ho  vyas  one  of  the  cut  bono  race,  a  branch  of  our  political 
economists.  When  they  showed  him  the  Laocoon,  Adrian  silenced 
thoir  raptures  by  the  frigid  observation,  that  all  such  things  were  idola 
antiquorum:  and  ridiculed  the  amena  letteratura  till  every  man  of 
genius  retreated  from  his  court.  Had  Adrian's  reign  extended  be- 
yond its  brief  period,  men  of  taste  in  their  panic  imagined  that  in  his 
zeal  the  Pontiff  would  have  calcined  the  fine  statues  of  ancient  art,  to 
expedite  the  edifice  of  St  Peter. 


DEBASED   VIEWS   OF   LITERATURE.  33 

attitudes  by  the  well-known  artifices  practised  by  modem 
criticism.  The  elephant,  no  longer  in  his  forest  struggling 
Avith  liis  hunters,  but  falling  entrapped  by  a  paltry  snare, 
comes  at  length,  in  the  height  of  ill-fortune,  to  dance  on 
heated  iron  at  the  bidding  of  the  pantaloon  of  a  fair. 
Whatever  such  critics  may  plead  to  mortify  the  vanity 
of  authors,  at  least  it  requires  as  much  vanity  to  give 
effect  to  their  own  polished  effrontery.*  Scorn,  sarcasm, 
and  invective,  the  egotism  of  the  vain,  and  the  irasci- 
bility of  the  petulant,  where  they  succeed  in  debilitating 
genius  of  the  conscioixsness  of  its  powers,  are  practising 
the  witchery  of  that  ancient  superstition  of  "  tying  the 
knot,"  which  threw  the  youthful  bridegroom  into  utter 
despair  by  its  ideal  forcefulness.f 

*  Listen  to  a  confession  and  a  recantation  of  an  illustrious  sinner; 
the  Corj'phc-eus  of  the  amusing  and  new-found  art,  or  artifice,  of 
modern  criticism.  In  tlie  cliaracter  of  Burns,  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
viewer, with  his  peculiar  felicity  of  manner,  attacked  the  character  of 
the  man  of  genius ;  but  when  Mr.  Campbell  vindicated  his  immortal 
brother  with  all  the  inspiration  of  the  family  feeling,  our  critic,  who  is 
one  of  tliose  great  artists  who  acquire  at  length  the  utmost  indiffer- 
ence even  for  their  own  works,  generously  avowed  that,  "  a  certain 
tone  of  exaggeration  is  incidental  we  fear  to  the  sort  of  writing  in  which 
we  are  engaged.  Reckoning  a  little  too  much  on  the  dulness  of  our 
readers,  we  are  often  led  to  overstate  our  sentiments :  when  a  little 
controversial  v)armth  is  added  to  a  little  love  of  effect,  an  excess  of  colour- 
ing steals  over  the  canvas,  which  ultimately  offends  no  eye  so  much  as 
our  own."  But  wliat  if  this  love  of  effect  in  the  critic  has  been  too 
often  obtained  at  the  entire  cost  of  tlie  literary  characters,  the  fruits  of 
whose  studious  days  at  this  moment  he  withering  in  oblivion,  or 
whose  genius  the  critic  lias  deterred  from  pursuing  the  career  it  had 
opened  for  itself  I  To  have  silenced  the  learned,  and  to  have  terrified 
the  modest,  is  the  barbarous  triumph  of  a  Hun  or  a  Vandal ;  and  the 
vaunted  freedom  of  the  literary  republic  departed  from  us  when  the 
vacillating  public  blindly  consecrated  the  edicts  of  the  demagogues  of 
literature,  whoever  they  may  be. 

A  reaction  appears  in  the  burlesque  or  bantering  spirit.  "While  one 
faction  drives  out  another,  the  abuse  of  extraordinary  powers  is 
equally  fatal.  Thu3  we  are  consoled  wliile  we  are  afflicted,  and  we 
are  protected  while  we  are  degraded. 

f  Nouer  VaiguH^^Me,  of  -^hich  the  extraordinary  eflTect  is  described 


34  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

That  spirit  of  levity  which  would  shake  the  columns  of 
society,  by  detracting  from  or  burlesquing  the  elevating 
principles  which  have  produced  so  many  illustrious  men, 
has  recently  attempted  to  reduce  the  labours  of  literature 
to  a  mere  curious  amusement :  a  finished  composition  is 
likened  to  a  skilful  game  of  billiards,  or  a  piece  of  music 
finely  executed ;  and  curious  researches,  to  charades  and 
other  insignificant  puzzles.  With  such,  an  author  is  an 
idler  who  will  not  be  idle,  amusing  or  fatiguing  others 
who  are  completely  so.  The  result  of  a  work  of  genius 
is  contracted  to  the  art  of  writing ;  but  this  art  is  only 
its  last  perfection.  Inspiration  is  drawn  from  a  deeper 
source  ;  enthusiasm  is  diffused  through  contagious  pages ; 
and  without  these  movements  of  the  soul,  how  poor  and 
artificial  a  thing  is  that  sparkling  composition  which 
flashes  with  the  cold  vibrations  of  mere  art  or  artifice  ! 
We  have  been  recently  told,  on  critical  authority,  that 
"  a  great  genius  should  never  allow  himself  to  be  sensible 
to  his  own  celebrity,  nor  deem  his  pursuits  of  much  con- 
sequence, however  important  or  successful."  A  sort  of 
catholic  doctrine,  to  mortify  an  author  into  a  saint,  ex- 
tinguishing the  glorious  appetite  of  fame  by  one  Lent  all 
the  year,  and  self-flagellation  every  day !  Buflbn  and 
Gibbon,  Voltaire  and  Pope,*  who  gave  to  literature  all 
the  cares,  the  industry,  and  the  glory  of  their  lives,  as- 
suredly were  too  "  sensible  to  their  celebrity,  and  deemed 
their  pursuits  of  much  consequence,"  particularly  when 
"  important  and  successful,"  The  self-possession  of  great 
authors  sustains  their  own  genius  by  a  sense  of  their 
own  glory. 

by   Montaigne,  is  an  Oriental  custom  still  practised. — Mr.  Hobhouse^s 
Journey  through  Albania,  p.  528. 

*  The  olairas  of  Pope  to  the  title  of  a  great  poet  were  denied  in  the 
days  of  Byron ;  and  occasioned  a  warm  and  noble  defence  of  liim  by 
that  poet.  It  has  since  been  found  necessary  to  do  the  same  for  Byron, 
whom  some  transcendentalists  have  attacked. — Ed. 


ART  AND   LITERATURE.  35 

Such,  then,  are  some  of  the  domestic  treasons  of  the  lit- 
erary character  against  literature — "  Et  tu,  Brute  !"  But 
the  hero  of  literature  outlives  his  assassins,  and  might  ad- 
dress them  in  that  language  of  poetry  and  aftection  with 
which  a  Mexican  king  reproached  his  traitorous  counsel- 
lors— "  You  were  the  feathers  of  my  wings,  and  the  ejf 
lids  of  my  eyes." 


CHAPTER    III. 


Of  artists,  in  the  history  of  men  of  literary  genius. — Their  habits  and 
pursuits  analogous. — The  nature  of  their  genius  is  similar  in  their 
distinct  works. — Shown  by  their  parallel  eras,  and  by  a  common  end 
pursued  by  both. 

A  RTISTS  and  literary  men,  alike  insulated  in  their 
■^  studies,  pass  through  the  same  permanent  discipline ; 
and  thus  it  has  happened  that  the  same  habits  and  feel- 
ings, and  the  same  fortunes,  have  accompanied  men  who 
have  sometimes  unhappily  imagined  their  pursuits  not 
to  be  analogous. 

Let  the  artist  share 
The  palm  ;  he  shares  the  peril,  and  dejected 
Faints  o'er  the  labour  unapproved — alas  1 
Despair  and  genius  1 — 

The  congenial  histories  of  literature  and  art  describe 
the  same  periodical  revolutions  and  parallel  eras.  After 
the  golden  age  of  Latinity,  we  gradually  slide  into  the 
silver,  and  at  length  precipitately  descend  into  the  iron. 
In  the  history  of  painting,  after  the  splendid  epoch  of 
Raphael,  Titian,  and  Correggio,  we  meet  with  pleasure 
the  Carraccis,  Domenichino,  Guido,  and  Albano ;  as  we 
read  Paterculus,  Quintilian,  Seneca,  Juvenal,  and  Silius 
Italicus,  after  their  immortal  masters,  Cicero,  Livy, 
Virgil,  and  Horace. 

It  is  evident  that  Milton,  JMichael  Angelo,  and  Handel, 


36  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

belong  to  the  same  order  of  minds  ;  the  same  imaginative 
powers,  and  the  same  sensibility,  are  only  operating  with 
different  materials.  Lanzi,  the  delightful  historian  of 
the  Storia  Pittorica^  is  prodigal  of  his  comparisons  of  the 
painters  with  the  poets;  his  delicacy  of  perception  dis- 
cerned the  refined  analogies  which  for  ever  unite  the  two 
sisters,  and  he  fondly  dwelt  on  the  ti'ansplanted  flowers 
of  the  two  arts  :  "  Chi  sente  che  sia  Tibullo  nel  poetare 
sente  chi  sia  Atidrea  {del  Sarto)  nel  dipingere ;''"'  he  who 
feels  what  Tibullus  is  in  poetry,  feels  what  Andrea  is  in 
painting.  Michael  Angelo,  from  his  profound  conception 
of  the  terrible  and  the  difiicult  in  art,  was  called  its 
Dante  ;  from  the  Italian  poet  the  Italian  sculptor  de- 
rived the  grandeur  of  his  ideas  ;  and  indeed  the  visions 
of  the  bard  had  deeply  nourished  the  artist's  imagina- 
tion ;  for  once  he  had  poured  about  the  margins  of  his 
own  copy  their  ethereal  inventions,  in  the  rapid  designs 
of  his  pen.  And  so  Bellori  informs  us  of  a  very  cui'ious 
volume  in  manuscript,  composed  by  Rubens,  which  con- 
tained, among  other  topics  concerning  art,  descriptions 
of  the  passions  and  actions  of  men,  drawn  from  the 
poets,  and  demonstrated  to  the  eye  by  the  painters. 
Here  were  battles,  shipwrecks,  sports,  groups,  and  other 
incidents,  which  were  transcribed  from  Virgil  and  other 
poets,  and  by  their  side  Rubens  had  copied  what  he  had 
met  with  on  those  subjects  from  Raphael  and  the  an- 
tique.* 

The  poet  and  the  painter  are  only  truly  great  by  the 
mutual  influences  of  their  studies,  and  the  jealousy  of 
glory  has  only  produced  an  idle  contest.  This  old 
family-quarrel  for  precedence  was  renewed  by  our  esti- 
mable President,  in  his  brilliant  "Rhymes  on  Art ;"  where 
he  maintains  that  "  the  narrative  of  an  action  is  not  com- 

*  Rubens  was  an  ardent  collector  of  works  of  antique  art ;  and  in  the 
"  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  398,  will  be  found  an  interesting 
account  of  his  musoura  at  Antwerp. — Ed. 


ART   AND   LITERATURE.  37 

parable  to  the  action  itself  before  the  eyes;"  while  the 
enthusiast  Barry  considers  painting  "  as  poetry  realised."* 
This  error  of  genius,  perhaps  first  caught  from  Richard- 
son's bewildering  pages,  was  strengthened  by  the  extrav- 
agant principle  adopted  by  Darwin,  who,  to  exalt  his 
solitary  talent  of  descriptive  poetry,  asserted  that  "  the 
essence  of  poetry  was  picture."  The  philosophical  critic 
will  find  no  difiiculty  in  assigning  to  each  sister-art  her 
distinct  province ;  and  it  is  only  a  pleasing  delirium,  in 
the  enthusiasm  of  artists,  which  has  confused  the  bound- 
aries of  these  arts.  The  dread  pathetic  story  of  Dante's 
"Ugolino,"  under  the  plastic  hand  of  Michael  Angelo, 
formed  the  subject  of  a  basso-relievo;  and  Reynolds, 
with  his  highest  efibrt,  embodied  the  terrific  conception 
of  the  poet  as  much  as  his  art  permitted :  but  assuredly 
both  these  great  artists  would  never  have  claimed  the 
precedence  of  the  Dantesc  genius,  and  might  have  hesi- 
tated at  the  rivalry. 

Who  has  not  heard  of  that  one  common  principle 
which  unites  the  intellectual  arts,  and  who  has  not  felt 
that  the  nature  of  their  genius  i?  similar  in  their  distinct 
works?  Hence  curious  inquiries  could  never  decide 
whether  the  group  of  the  Laocoon  in  sculpture  preceded 
or  was  borrowed  from  that  in  poetry.  Lessing  conjec- 
tures that  the  sculptor  copied  the  poet.  It  is  evident 
that  the  agony  of  Laocoon  was  the  common  end  where 
the  sculptor  and  the  poet  were  to  meet ;  and  we  may  ob- 
serve that  the  artists  in  marble  and  in  verse  skilfully 

*The  late  Sir  Martin  Archer  Shee,  P.  R.  A.  Tliis  accomplished  ar- 
tist, who  possessed  a  large  amount  of  poetical  and  literary  power,  asks, 
"  What  is  there  of  intdkctiial  in  the  operations  of  the  poet  which  the 
painter  does  not  equal  ?  "What  is  there  of  inec.Jianical  which  be  does 
not  surpass?  The  advantage  which  poetry  possesses  over  painting  in 
continued  narration  and  successive  impression,  cannot  be  advanced  as 
a  peculiar  merit  of  the  poet,  since  it  results  from  the  nature  of  lan- 
guage, and  is  common  to  prose."  Poetry  he  values  as  the  earUest  of 
arts,  painting  as  the  latest  and  most  rehned. — Ed. 


38  LITERARY  CHARACTER, 

adapted  their  variations  to  their  respective  art :  the  one 
having  to  prefer  tlTe  nude,  rejected  the  veiling  fillet  from 
the  forehead,  that  he  might  not  conceal  its  deep  expres- 
sion, and  the  drapery  of  the  sacrificial  robe,  that  he 
might  display  the  human  form  in  visible  agony ;  but  the 
other,  by  the  charm  of  verse,  could  invest  the  priest 
with  the  pomp  of  the  pontifical  robe  without  hiding  from 
us  the  interior  sufferings  of  the  human  victim.  We  see 
they  obtained  by  difierent  means,  adapted  to  their  respect- 
ive arts,  that  common  end  which  each  designed ;  but  who 
will  decide  which  invention  preceded  the  other,  or  who 
was  the  greater  artist  ? 

This  approximation  of  men  apparently  of  opposite 
pursuits  is  so  natural,  that  when  Gesner,  in  his  inspiring 
letter  on  landscape-painting,*  recommends  to  the  young 
painter  a  constant  study  of  poetry  and  literature,  the  im- 
patient artist  is  made  to  exclaim,  "  Must  we  combine 
with  so  many  other  studies  those  which  belong  to  liter- 
ary men  ?  Must  we  read  as  well  as  paint  ?"  "  It  is  use- 
less to  reply  to  this  question ;  for  some  important  truths 
must  be  instinctively  felt,  perhaps  the  fundamental  ones 
in  the  arts."  A  truly  imaginative  artist,  whose  enthusi- 
asm was  never  absent  when  he  meditated  on  the  art  he 
loved,  Barry,  thus  vehemently  broke  forth :  "  Go  home 
from  the  academy,  light  up  your  lamps,  and  exercise 
yourselves  in  the  creative  part  of  your  art,  with  Homer, 
with  Livy,  and  all  the  great  characters,  ancient  aiid  mod- 
ern, for  your  companions  and  counsellors."  This  genial 
intercourse  of  literature  with  art  may  be  .proved  by 
painters  who  have  suggested  subjects  to  poets,  and  poets 
who  have  selected  them  for  painters.  Goldsmith  sug- 
gested the  Bu))ject  of  the  tragic  and  pathetic  picture  of 
Ugolino  to  the  pencil  of  lleynolds. 

♦Fow  writers  wore  so  competent  to  instruct  in  art  as  Gesnor,  who 
was  not  only  un  author  and  a  poet,  but  an  artist  who  decorated  his 
poems  Vjy  designs  as  graceful  as  their  subject. — Ed. 


NATUEAL   GENIUS.  39 

All  the  classes  of  men  in  society  have  their  peculiar 
sorrows  nnd  enjoyments,  as  they  have  their  peculiar  habits 
and  characteristics.  In  the  history  of  men  of  genius  we 
may  often  open  the  secret  story  of  their  minds,  for  they 
have  above  others  the  privilege  of  communicating  their 
own  feelings ;  and  every  life  of  a  man  of  genius,  composed 
by  himself,  presents  us  with  the  experimental  philosophy 
of  the  mind.  By  living  with  their  brothers,  and  con- 
templating their  masters,  they  will  judge  from  conscious- 
ness less  erroneously  than  from  discussion ;  and  in  form- 
ing comparative  views  and  parallel  situations,  they  will 
discover  certain  habits  and  feelings,  and  find  these  reflect- 
ed in  themselves. 

Sydenham  has  beautifully  said,  "  Whoever  describes  a 
violet  exactly  as  to  its  colour,  taste,  smell,  form,  and  other 
properties,  will  find  the  description  agree  in  most  par- 
ticulars with  all  the  violets  in  the  universe." 


CHAPTER  IV. 


Of  natural  genius. — Minds  constitutionally  different  cannot  have  an 
equal  aptitude. — Genius  not  the  result  of  habit  and  education. — 
Originates  in  peculiar  qualities  of  the  mind. — The  predisposition  of 
genius. — A  substitution  for  the  white  paper  of  Locke.* 

THAT   faculty  in  art  which  individualises  the  artist, 
belonging  to  him  and  to  no  other,  and  which  in  a 
work  forms  that  creative  part  whose  likeness  is  not  found 

*  In  the  second  edition  of  this  work  in  1818,  I  touched  on  some 
points  of  this  inquiry  in  the  second  chapter:  I  almost  despaired  to 
find  any  philosopher  sympathise  with  tlie  subject,  so  invulnerable, 
they  imagine,  are  the  entrenchments  of  their  theories.  I  was  agree- 
ably surprised  to  find  tliese  ideas  taken  up  in  the  Edinburgh  Reiiew  fur 
August,  1820,  in  an  entertaining  article  on  Reynolds.  I  have,  no  doubt 
profited  by  the  perusal,  though  this  chapter  was  prepared  before  C 


40  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

in  any  other  work — is  it  inherent  in  the  constitutional 
dispositions  of  the  Creator,  or  can  it  be  formed  by  patient 
acquisition  ? 

Astonished  at  their  own  silent  and  obscure  progress, 
some  have  imagined  that  they  have  formed  their  genius 
solely  by  their  own  studies ;  when  they  generated,  they 
conceived  that  they  had  acquired ;  and,  losing  the  dis- 
tinction between  nature  and  habit,  with  fatal  temerity  the 
idolatry  of  philosophy  substituted  something  visible  and 
palpable,  yet  shaped  by  the  most  opposite  fancies,  called 
a  Theory,  for  Nature  herself!  Men  of  genius,  whose 
great  occupation  is  to  be  conversant  with  the  inspirations 
of  Nature,  made  up  a  factitious  one  among  themselves, 
and  assumed  that  they  could  operate  without  the  inter- 
vention of  the  occult  original.  But  Nature  would  not  be 
mocked;  and  whenever  this  race  of  idolaters  have 
worked  without  her  agency,  she  has  aflBicted  them  with 
the  most  stubborn  sterility. 

Theoiies  of  genius  are  the  peculiar  constructions  of  our 
own  philosophical  times ;  ages  of  genius  had  passed  away, 
and  they  left  no  other  record  than  their  works ;  no  pre- 
concerted theory  described  the  workings  of  the  imagina- 
tion to  be  without  imagination,  nor  did  they  venture  to 
teach  how  to  invent  invention. 

The  character  of  genius,  viewed  as  the  effect  of  habit 
and  education,  on  the  principle  of  the  equality  of  the 
human  mind,  infers  that  men  have  an  equal  aptitude  for 
the  work  of  genius :  a  paradox  which,  with  a  more  fatal 
one,  came  from  the  French  school,  and  arose  probably 
from  an  equivocal  expression. 

Locke  employed  the  well-known  comparison  of  the 
mind  with  "  white  })aper  void  of  all  characters,"  to  free 
his  famous  "Incpiiry"  from  that  poAverful  obstacle  to  his 
system,  the  al)surd  belief  of  "innate  ideas,"  of  notions  of 

met  with  that  spirited  vindication  of  "  an  inherent  difiference  in  the 
organs  or  faculties  to  receive  impressions  of  any  kind." 


THEORIES   OF   GENIUS.  41 

objects  before  objects  were  presented  to  observation. 
Our  pliilosopher  considered  that  this  simple  analogy 
sufficiently  described  the  manner  in  which  he  conceived 
the  impressions  of  the  senses  write  themselves  on  the  mind. 
His  French  pupiV,  the  amusing  Helvetius,  or  Diderot, 
for  they  were  equally  concerned  in  the  paradoxical 
"L'Esprit,"  inferred  that  this  blank  paper  served  also 
as  an  evidence  that  men  had  an  equal  aptitude  for 
genius^  just  as  the  blank  paper  reflects  to  us  whatever 
characters  we  trace  on  it.  This  equality  of  minds  gave 
rise  to  the  same  monstrous  doctrine  in  the  science  of 
metaphysics  which  that  of  another  verbal  misconception, 
the  equality  of  men,  did  in  that  of  politics.  The  Scottish 
metaphysicians  powerfully  combined  to  illustrate  the 
mechanism  of  the  mind, — an  important  and  a  curious 
truth  ;  for  as  rules  and  j^rinciples  exist  in  the  nature  of 
things,  and  when  discovered  are  only  thence  drawn  out, 
genius  unconsciously  conducts  itself  by  a  uniform  pro- 
cess ;  and  when  this  process  had  been  traced,  they  in- 
ferred that  what  was  done  by  some  men,  under  the 
influence  of  fundamental  laws  which  regulate  the  march 
of  the  intellect,  must  also  be  in  the  reach  of  others,  who, 
in  the  same  circumstances,  apply  themselves  to  the  same 
study.  But  these  metaphysicians  resemble  anatomists, 
under  whose  knife  all  men  are  alike.  They  know  the 
structure  of  the  bones,  the  movement  of  the  muscles, 
and  where  the  connecting  ligaments  lie !  but  the  invis- 
ible principle  of  life  flies  from  their  touch.  It  is  the 
practitioner  on  the  living  body  who  studies  in  every 
individual  that  peculiarity  of  constitution  which  forms 
the  idiosyncrasy. 

Under  the  influence  of  such  novel  theories  of  genius, 
Johnson  defined  it  as  "  A  Mind  of  large  general  powers 
ACCIDENTALLY  determined  by  some  particidar  direction.'''' 
On  this  principle  we  must  infer  that  the  reasoning 
Locke,  or  the  arithmetical  De  Moivre,  could  have  been 


42  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

the  musical  and  fairy  Speiisei-.*  This  conception  of  the 
nature  of  genius  became  prevalent.  It  induced  the 
philosopliical  Beccaria  to  assert  that  every  individual  had 
an  equal  degree  of  genius  for  poetry  and  eloquence ;  it 
runs  through  the  philosophy  of  the  elegant  Dugald 
Stewart ;  and  Reynolds,  the  pupil  of  Johnson  in  litera- 
ture, adopting  the  paradox,  constructed  his  automatic 
system  on  this  principle  of  equal  aptitude.  He  says, 
"  this  excellence,  however  expressed  by  genius,  taste,  or 
the  gift  of  Heaven,  I  am  confident  may  be  acquired?'' 
Reynolds  had  the  modesty  to  fancy  that  so  many  rivals, 
unendowed  by  nature,  might  have  equalled  the  magic 
of  his  own  pencil :  but  his  theory  of  industry,  so  essential 
to  genius,  yet  so  useless  without  it,  too  long  stimulated 
the  drudges  of  art,  and  left  us  without  a  Correggio  or  a 
Raphael !  Another  man  of  genius  caught  the  fever  of 
the  new  system.  Currie,  in  his  eloquent  "Life  of 
Burns,"  swells  out  the  scene  of  genius  to  a  startling 
magnificence  ;  for  he  asserts  that,  "  the  talents  necessary 
to  the  construction  of  an  '  Iliad,'  under  difierent  dis- 
cipline and  application,  might  have  led  armies  to  vic- 
tory or  kingdoms  to  prosperity;  might  have  wielded 
the  thunder  of  eloquence,  or  discovered  and  enlarged 
the  sciences."  All  this  we  find  in  the  text ;  but  in  the 
clear  intellect  of  this  man  of  genius  a  vast  number  of 
intervening  difficulties  started  up,  and  in  a  copious  note 
the  numerous  exceptions  show  that  the  assumed  theory 
requires    no    other    refutation   than   what   the    theorist 

*  It  is  more  dangcro\is  to  define  than  to  describe :  a  dry  definition 
excludes  so  much,  an  ardent  description  at  once  appeals  to  our  sympa- 
thies. TIow  much  more  comprehensible  our  great  critic  becomes 
when  he  nobly  describes  genius,  "  as  the  power  of  mind  that  collects, 
comljines,  amplifies,  and  animates ;  the  energy  without  which  judg- 
ment is  cod,  and  knowledge  is  inert  1"  And  it  is  this  power  of 
MINI),  this  primary  faculty  and  native  aptitude,  which  wo  deem  may 
exist  separately  from  education  and  habit,  since  these  are  often 
found  unaccompanied  by  genius. 


THEORIES  OF  GENIUS.  43 

has  himself  so  abundantly  and  so  judiciously  supplied. 
There  is  something  ludicrous  in  the  result  of  a  theory  of 
genius  which  would  place  Hobbes  and  Erasmus,  those 
timid  and  learned  recluses,  to  open  a  campaign  with  the 
military  invention  and  physical  inti'epidity  of  a  Marl- 
borough; or  conclude  that  the  romantic  bard  of  the 
"Fairy  Queen,"  amidst  the  quickly-shifting  scenes  of  his 
visionary  reveries,  could  have  deduced,  by  slow  and 
patient  watchings  of  the  mind,  the  system  and  the 
demonstrations  of  Newton. 

Such  theorists  deduce  the  faculty  called  genius  from  a 
variety  of  exterior  or  secondary  causes:  zealously  reject- 
ing the  notion  that  genius  may  originate  in  constitu- 
tional dispositions,  and  be  only  a  mode  of  the  individual's 
existence,  they  deny  that  minds  are  differently  consti- 
tuted. Habit  and  education,  being  more  palpable  and 
visible  in  their  operations,  and  progressive  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  intellectual  faculties,  have  been  imagined 
fully  sufficient  to  make  the  creative  faculty  a  subject  of 
acquirement. 

But  when  these  theorists  had  discovered  the  curious 
fact,  that  we  have  owed  to  accident  several  men  of  genius, 
and  when  they  laid  open  some  sources  which  iafluenced 
genius  in  its  progress,  they  did  not  go  one  step  further, 
they  did  not  inquu-e  whether  such  sources  and  such  acci- 
dents had  ever  supplied  the  icant  of  genius  in  the  individ- 
ual. Effects  were  liere  again  mistaken  for  causes.  Could 
Spenser  have  kindled  a  poet  in  Cowley,  Richardson  a 
painter  in  Reynolds,  and  Descartes  a  metaphysician 
in  Malebranche,  if  those  master-minds,  pointed  out  as 
having  been  such  from  accident,  had  not  first  received 
the  indelible  mint-stamp  struck  by  the  hand  of  Xature, 
and  which,  to  give  it  a  name,  we  may  be  allowed  to  call 
the  2yf^(^isposition  of  genius  ?  The  accidents  so  triumph- 
antly held  forth,  which  are  imagined  to  have  created  the 
genius  of  these  men,  have  occurred  to  a  thousand  who 


4:4  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

have  run  the  same  career ;  but  how  does  it  happen  that 
the  multitude  remain  a  multitude,  and  the  man  of  genius 
arrives  alone  at  the  goal  ? 

This  theory,  which  long  dazzled  its  beholders,  was  in 
time  found  to  stand  in  contradiction  with  it':elf.  and 
perpetually  with  their  own  experience,  Reynolds  pared 
down  his  decision  in  the  progress  of  his  lectures,  often 
wavered,  often  altered,  and  grew  more  confused  as  he 
lived  longer  to  look  about  him,*  The  infirm  votaries  of 
the  new  philosophy,  with  all  their  sources  of  genius  open 
before  them,  went  on  multiplying  mediocrity,  while 
inherent  genius,  true  to  nature,  still  continued  rare  in 
its  solitary  independence. 

Others  have  strenuously  denied  that  we  are  born  with 
any  peculiar  species  of  mind,  and  resolve  the  mysterious 
problem  into  capacity^  of  which  men  only  differ  in  the 
degree.  They  can  perceive  no  distinction  between  the 
poetical  and  the  mathematical  genius ;  and  they  con- 
clude that  a  man  of  genius,  possessing  a  general  capacity, 
may  become  whatever  he  chooses,  but  is  determined  by 
his  first  acquired  habit  to  be  what  he  is.f 

In  substituting  the  term  capacity  for  that  of  genius^ 

*  I  transcribe  the  last  opinions  of  Mr.  Edgeworth.  "As  to  original 
genius,  and  the  effect  of  education  in  forming  taste  or  directing  talent, 
the  last  revisal  of  his  opinions  was  given  by  himself,  in  th«  introduc- 
tion to  the  second  edition  of  '  Professional  Kducation.'  He  was 
strengthened  in  his  belief  that  many  of  the  great  differences  of  intellect 
whicli  appear  in  men,  depend  more  upon  the  early  cultivating  the 
habit  of  attention  than  upon  any  disparity  between  the  powers  of  one 
individual  and  another.  Perhaps,  he  latterly  allowed  that  there  is 
more  difference  than  he  had  formerly  admitted  between  the  natural 
powers  of  different  persons;  but  not  so  groat  as  is  generally  supposed." 
—Eilijeiuortli's  Memoirs,  ii.,  3cS8. 

f  Johnson  once  asserted,  that  "the  supposition  of  one  man  having 
more  imagination,  another  more  judgment,  is  not  true;  it  is  only  one 
man  has  more  mind  than  another.  He  who  has  vigour  may  walk  to 
the  east  as  well  as  the  west,  if  he  happens  to  turn  his  head  that 
way."  Godwin  was  persuaded  that  ail  genius  is  a  niore  arqui.ntian, 
for  ho  hints  at  "infusing  it,"  and  making  it  a  thing  "heritable."     A 


PREDISPOSITION"   OF   GEXIUS.  45 

the  oi'igin  or  nature  remains  equally  occult.  How  is  it 
acquired,  or  how  is  it  inherent  ?  To  assert  that  any  man 
of  genius  may  become  what  he  wills,  those  most  fer- 
vently protest  against  who  feel  that  the  character  of 
genius  is  such  that  it  cannot  be  other  than  it  is ;  that 
there  is  an  identity  of  minds,  and  that  there  exists  an 
interior  conformity  as  marked  and  as  perfect  as  the 
exterior  physiognomy.  A  Scotch  metaphysician  has 
recently  declared  that  "  Locke  or  Newton  might  have 
been  as  eminent  poets  as  Homer  or  Milton,  had  they 
given  themselves  early  to  the  study  of  poetry."  It  is 
well  to  know  how  far  this  taste  will  go.  We  believe 
that  had  these  philosophers  obstinately,  against  nature, 
persisted  in  the  attempt,  as  some  have  unluckily  for 
themselves,  we  should  have  lost  two  great  philosophers, 
and  have  obtained  two  supernumerary  poets.* 

It  would  be  more  useful  to  discover  another  source  of 
genius  for  philosophers  and  poets,  less  fallible  than  the 
gratuitous  assumptions  of  these  theorists.  An  adequate 
oi'igin  for  peculiar  qualities  in  the  mind  may  be  found 
in  that  constitutional  or  secret  propensity  which  adapts 
some  for  particular  pursuits  and  forms  the.  predlsjjosition 
of  genius. 

Not  that  we  are  bound  to  demonstrate  what  our 
adversaries  have  failed  in  proving ;  we  may  still  remain 
ignorant  of  the  nature  of  genius,  and  yet  be  convinced 

reversion  which  has  been  missed  by  tlie  many  respectable  dunces  who 
have  been  sons  of  men  of  genius. 

*  This  very  Scotch  metaphysician,  at  the  instant  he  lays  down  this 
postulate,  acknowledges  that  "  Dr.  Beattie  had  talents  for  a  poet,  but 
apparently  not  for  a  philosoplier.^'  It  is  amusing  to  learn  another 
result  of  his  ungenial  metaphysics.  This  sage  demonstrates  and  con- 
cludes in  these  words,  "  It  will  therefore  be  found,  with  little  excep- 
tion, that  a  great  poet  itt  hut  an  ordinary  genius."  Let  this  sturdy  Scotch 
metaphysician  never  approach  Pegasus — he  has  to  fear,  not  his  wings, 
but  his  heels.  If  some  have  written  on  genius  with  a  great  deal  too 
much,  others  have  written  without  any. 


46  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

that  they  have  not  revealed  it.  The  phenomena  of  pre- 
disposition in  the  mind  are  not  more  obscure  and  am- 
biguous than  those  which  have  been  assigned  as  the 
sources  of  genius  in  certain  individuals.  For  is  it  more 
difficult  to  conceive  that  a  person  bears  in  his  constitu- 
tional disposition  a  germ  of  native  aptitude  which  is 
developing  itself  to  a  predominant  character  of  genius, 
which  breaks  'forth  in  the  temperament  and  moulds  the 
habits,  than  to  conjecture  that  these  men  of  genius  could 
not  have  been  such  but  from  accident^  or  that  they  differ 
only  in  their  capacity  f 

Every  class  of  men  of  genius  has  distinct  habits ;  all 
poets  resemble  one  another,  as  all  painters  and  all  mathe- 
maticians. There  is  a  conformity  in  the  cast  of  their 
minds,  and  the  quality  of  each  is  distinct  from  the  other, 
and  the  very  faculty  which  fits  them  for  one  particular 
pursuit,  is  just  the  reverse  required  for  another.  If 
these  are  truisms,  as  they  may  appear,  we  need  not 
demonstrate  that  from  which  we  only  wish  to  draw  our 
conclusion.  Why  does  this  remarkable  similarity  pre- 
vail through  the  classes  of  genius?  Because  each,  in 
their  favourite  production,  is  working  with  the  same 
appropriate  organ.  The  poetical  eye  is  early  busied 
with  imagery ;  as  early  will  the  reveries  of  the  poetical 
mind  be  busied  with  the  passions ;  as  early  will  the 
painter's  hand  be  copying  forms  and  colours ;  as  early 
will  the  young  musician's  ear  wander  in  the  creation  of 
sounds,  and  the  philosopher's  head  matiire  its  medita- 
tions. It  is  then  the  aptitude  of  the  appropriate  organ, 
however  it  varies  in  its  character,  in  which  genius  seems 
most  concerned,  and  which  is  connatural  and  connate 
with  the  individual,  and,  as  it  was  expressed  in  old  days, 
is  horn  witli  him.  Tliere  seems  no  other  source  of 
genius  ;  for  whenever  tliis  has  been  refused  by  nature,  as 
it  is  so  often,  no  theory  of  genius,  neither  habit  nor  educa- 
tion, have  ever  supplied  its  want.     To  discriminate  be- 


PREDISPOSITION   AND   HABIT.  47 

tween  the  habit  and  the  2^^&(^isposition  is  quite  impossible ; 
because  whenever  great  genius  discovers  itself,  as  it  can 
only  do  by  continuity,  it  has  become  a  habit  with  the 
individual;  it  is  the  fatal  notion  of  habit  hav'ng  the 
power  of  generating  genius,  which  has  so  long  served  to 
delude  the  numerous  votaries  of  mediocrity.  Natural  or 
native  power  is  enlarged  by  art ;  but  the  most  perfect 
art  has  but  narrow  limits,  deprived  of  natural  disposition. 
A  curious  decision  on  this  obscure  subject  may  be 
drawn  from  an  admirable  judge  of  the  nature  of  genius. 
Akenside,  in  that  fine  poem  which  forms  its  history, 
tracing  its  source,  sang. 

From  Heaven  my  strains  begin,  from  Heaven  descends 
The  flame  of  genius  to  the  human  breast. 

But  in  the  final  revision  of  that  poem,  which  he  left 
many  years  after,  the  bard  has  vindicated  the  solitary  and 
independent  origin  of  genius,  by  the  mysterious  epithet, 

THE   CHOSEN  BREAST. 

The  veteran  poet  was,  perhaps,  schooled  by  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  his  own  poetical  life,  and  those  of  some  of  his 
brothers. 

Metaphors  are  but  imperfect  illustrations  in  meta- 
physical inquiries ;  usually  they  include  too  little  or  take 
in  too  much.  Yet  fanciful  analogies  are  not  willingly 
abandoned.  The  iconologists  describe  Genius  as  a 
winged  child  with  a  flame  above  its  head;  the  wings 
and  the  flame  express  more  than  some  metaphysical  con- 
clusions. Let  me  substitute  for  "  the  white  paper "  of 
Locke,  which  served  the  philosopher  in  his  description 
of  the  operations  of  the  senses  on  the  mind,  a  less  arti- 
ficial substance.  In  the  soils  of  the  earth  we  may  dis- 
cover that  variety  of  primary  qualities  which  we  believe 
to  exist  in  human  minds.  The  botanist  and  the  geolo- 
gist always  find  the  nature  of  the  strata  indicative  of 


48  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

its  productions ;  the  meagre  light  herbage  announces  thn 
poverty  of  the  soil  it  covers,  while  the  luxuriant  growth 
of  plants  betray**  the  richness  of  the  matrix  in  which  the 
roots  are  jQxed  It  is  scarcely  reasoning  by  analogy  to 
apply  this  operating  principle  of  nature  to  the  faculties 
of  men. 

But  while  the  origin  and  nature  of  that  faculty  which 
we  understand  by  the  term  Genius  remain  stUl  wrapt  up 
in  its  mysterious  bud,  may  we  not  trace  its  history  in  its 
votaries  ?  If  Nature  overshadow  with  her  wings  her 
first  causes,  still  the  effects  lie  open  before  us,  and  ex- 
perience and  observation  will  often  deduce  from  con- 
sciousness what  we  cannot  from  demonstration.  If 
Nature,  in  some  of  her  great  operations,  has  kept  back 
her  last  secrets ;  if  Newton,  even  in  the  result  of  his 
reasonings,  has  religiously  abstained  from  penetrating 
into  her  occult  connexions,  is  it  nothing  to  be  her 
historian,  although  we  cannot  be  her  legislator  ? 


CHAPTER    Y. 

f  outh  of  genius. — Its  first  impulses  may  be  illustrated  by  its  subse- 
quent actions. — Parents  have  another  association  of  the  man  of 
genius  than  we. — Of  genius,  its  first  habits. — Its  melanchol}''. — Its 
reveries. — Its  love  of  solitude. — Its  disiDosition  to  repose. — Of  a 
youth  distinguished  by  his  equals. — Feebleness  of  its  first  attempts. 
— Of  genius  not  discoverable  even  in  manhood. — The  education  of 
the  youth  may  not  be  that  of  his  genius. — An  unsettled  impulse, 
querulous  till  it  finds  its  true  oo('ii;)ation. — With  some,  curiosity  as 
intense  a  faculty  as  invention. —  What  the  youth  first  applies  to  is 
commonly  his  delight  afterwards. — Facts  of  the  decisive  character 
of  genius. 

¥E   are   entering   into   a   fairy  land,  touching   only 
shadows,  and  chasing  the  most  changeable  lights; 
many  stories  we  shall  hear,  and  many  scenes  will  open  on 


YOUTHFUL   STUDIES.  49 

ns ;  yet  though  realities  are  but  dimly  to  be  traced  iu  this 
twilight  of  imagination  and  tradition,  we  think  that  the 
first  impulses  of  genius  may  be  often  illustrated  by  the 
subsequent  actions  of  the  individual ;  and  whenever  we 
find  these  in  perfect  harmony,  it  will  be  difficult  to  con- 
vince us  that  there  does  not  exist  a  secret  connexion 
between  those  first  impulses  and  these  last  actions. 

Can  we  then  trace  in  the  faint  lines  of  his  youth  an 
unsteady  outline  of  the  man  ?  In  the  temperament  of 
genius  may  we  not  reasonably  look  for  certain  indica- 
tions or  predispositions,  announcing  the  permanent 
character  ?  Is  not  great  sensibility  born  with  its  irrita- 
ble fibres  ?  Will  not  the  deep  retired  chai-acter  cling  to 
its  musings  ?  And  the  unalterable  being  of  intrepidity 
and  fortitude,  will  he  not,  commanding  even  amidst  his 
sports,  lead  on  his  equals  ?  The  boyhood  of  Cato  was 
marked  by  the  sternness  of  the  man,  observable  in  his 
speech,  his  countenance,  and  his  puerile  amusements ; 
and  Bacon,  Descartes,  Hobbes,  Gray,  and  others,  be- 
trayed the  same  early  appearance  of  their  intellectual 
vigour  and  precocity  of  character. 

The  vii'tuous  and  contemplative  Boyle  imagined  that 
he  had  discovered  m  childhood  that  disposition  of  mind 
which  indicated  an  instinctive  ingenuousness.  An  inci- 
dent which  he  relates,  evinced,  as  he  thought,  that  even 
then  he  preferred  to  aggravate  his  fault  rather  than 
consent  to  suppress  any  part  of  the  truth,  an  effort  which 
had  been  unnatural  to  his  mind.  His  fanciful,  yet  strik- 
ing illustration  may  open  our  inquiry.  "This  trivial 
passage,"  the  little  story  alluded  to,  "  I  have  mentioned 
now,  not  that  I  think  that  in  itself  it  deserves  a  relation, 
but  because  as  the  sun  is  seen  best  at  his  rising  and  his 
setting,  so  men's  native  dispositions  are  clearliest  per- 
ceived whilst  they  are  children,  and  when  they  are 
dying.  These  little  sudden  actions  are  the  greatest  dis- 
coverers of  men's  ti'ue  humours." 
4 


50  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Alfieri,  that  historian  of  the  literary  mind,  was  con- 
scious that  even  in  his  chiklhood  the  peculiarity  and  the 
melancholy  of  his  character  prevailed :  a  boyhood  passed 
in  domestic  solitude  fed  the  interior  feelings  of  his  impas- 
sioned character ;  and  in  noticing  some  incidents  of  a 
childish  nature,  this  man  of  genius  observes,  "  Whoever 
will  reflect  on  these  inept  circumstances,  and  explore 
into  the  seeds  of  the  passions  of  man,  possibly  may  find 
these  neither  so  laughable  nor  so  puerile  as  they  may 
appear."  His  native  genius,  or  by  whatever  other  term 
we  may  describe  it,  betrayed  the  wayward  predisposi- 
tions of  some  of  his  poetical  brothers:  "Taciturn  and 
placid  for  the  most  part,  but  at  times  loquacious  and 
most  vivacious,  and  usually  in  the  most  opposite  ex- 
tremes ;  stubborn  and  impatient  against  force,  but  most 
open  to  kindness,  more  restrained  by  the  dread  of  repri- 
mand than  by  anything  else,  susceptible  of  shame  to 
excess,  but  inflexible  if  violently  opposed."  Such  is  the 
portrait  of  a  child  of  seven  years  old,  a  portrait  which 
induced  the  great  tragic  bard  to  deduce  this  result  from 
his  own  self-experience,  that  "  man  is  a  continuation  of 
the  cUkir  * 

That  the  dispositions  of  genius  in  early  life  presage 
its  futui-e  character,  was  long  the  feeling  of  antiquity. 
Cicero,  in  his  "  Dialogue  on  Old  Age,"  employs  a  beauti- 
ful analogy  drawn  from  Natui'e,  marking  her  secret 
conformity  in  all  things  which  have  life  and  come  from 
her  hands  ;  and  the  human  mind  is  one  of  her  plants. 
"  Youth  is  the  vernal  season  of  life,  and  the  blossoms 
it  then  puts  forth  are  indications  of  those  future  fruits 
which  are  to  be  gathered  in  the  succeeding  periods." 
One  of  the  masters  of  the  human  mind,  after  much  pre- 
vious observation  of  those  who    attended   his  lectures, 

*  See  in  his  Life,  chap,  iv.,  entitled  F^viluppo  deW  iiuhlf.  iivUcaio  da 
vari  faUiirelii.  "  Dovelo|);nent  of  genius,  or  natural  inclination,  indi- 
cated by  various  little  uiattora." 


YOUTHFUL   STUDIES.  51 

would  advise  one  to  engage  in  political  studies,  then 
exhorted  another  to  compose  history,  elected  these  to  be 
poets,  and  those  to  be  orators ;  for  Isocrates  believed  that 
Nature  had  some  concern  in  forming  a  man  of  genius,  and 
endeavoured  to  guess  at  her  secret  by  detecting  the  first 
energetic  inclination  of  the  mind.  This  also  was  the  prin- 
ciple which  guided  the  Jesuits,  those  other  great  masters 
in  the  art  of  education.  They  studied  the  characteristics 
of  their  pupils  with  such  singular  care,  as  to  keep  a  secret 
register  in  their  colleges,  descriptive  of  their  talents,  and 
the  natural  turn  of  their  dispositions.  In  some  cases  they 
guessed  with  remarkable  felicity.  They  described  Fon- 
tenelle,  adolesceiis  omnibus  numeris  ahsolutus  et  inter  dis- 
cipulos  princeps,  "  a  youth  accomplished  in  every  respect 
and  the  model  for  his  companions;"  but  when  they 
describe  the  elder  Crebillon,  piier  ingeniosus  sed  in- 
signis  nebulo,  "  a  shrewd  boy,  but  a  great  rascal,"  they 
might  not  have  erred  so  much  as  they  appear  to  have 
done  ;  for  an  impetuous  boyhood  showed  the  decision  of 
a  character  which  might  not  have  merely  and  misanthro- 
pically  settled  in  imaginary  scenes  of  horror,  and  the 
invention  of  characters  of  unparalleled  atrocity. 

In  the  old  romance  of  King  Arthur,  when  a  cowherd 
comes  to  the  king  to  request  he  would  make  his  son 
a  knight — "  It  is  a  great  thing  thou  askest,"  said  Arthur, 
who  inquired  whether  this  entreaty  proceeded  from  him 
or  his  son.  The  old  man's  answer  is  remarkable — "  Of 
my  son,  not  of  me ;  for  I  have  thirteen  sons,  and  all 
these  will  fall  to  that  labour  I  put  them ;  but  this  child 
will  not  labour  for  me  for  anything  that  I  and  my  wife 
will  do;  but  always  he  will  be  shooting  and  casting 
darts,  and  glad  for  to  see  battles,  and  to  behold  knights, 
and  always  day  and  night  he  desireth  of  me  to  be  made 
a  knight."  The  king  commanded  the  cowherd  to  fetch 
all  his  sons ;  "  they  were  all  shapeu  much  like  the  poor 
man ;  but  Tor  was  not  like  none  of  them  in  shape  and  in 


52  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

countenance,  for  he  was  much  more  than  any  of  them. 
And  so  Arthur  knighted  him."  This  simple  tale  is  the 
history  of  genius — the  cowherd's  twelve  sons  were  like 
himself,  but  the  unhappy  genius  in  the  family,  who  per- 
plexed and  plagued  the  cowherd  and  his  wife  and  his 
twelve  brothers,  was  the  youth  averse  to  the  common 
labour,  and  dreaming  of  chivalry  amidst  a  herd  of  cows. 

A  man  of  genius  is  thus  dropped  among  the  people, 
and  has  first  to  encounter  the  diiBculties  of  ordinary 
men,  unassisted  by  that  feeble  ductility  which  adapts 
itself  to  the  common  destination.  Parents  are  too  often 
the  victims  of  the  decided  propensity  of  a  son  to  a  Virgil 
or  a  Euclid ;  and  the  first  step  into  life  of  a  man  of 
genius  is  disobedience  and  grief.  Lilly,  •  our  famous 
astrologer,  has  described  the  frequent  situation  of  such 
a  youth,  like  the  cowhei'd's  son  who  would  be  a  knight. 
Lilly  proposed  to  his  father  that  he  should  try  his  for- 
tune in  the  metropolis,  where  he  expected  that  his  learn- 
ing and  his  talents  would  prove  serviceable  to  him ;  the 
father  quite  incapable  of  discovering  the  latent  genius 
of  his  son  in  his  studious  disposition,  very  willingly 
consented  to  get  rid  of  him,  for,  as  Lilly  proceeds, 
"  I  could  not  work,  drive  the  plough,  or  endure  any 
country  labour ;  my  father  oft  would  say  I  was  good  for 
nothing^'' — words  which  the  fathers  of  so  many  men  of 
genius  have  repeated.* 

In  reading  the  memoirs  of  a  man  of  genius,  we  often 
reprobate   tlie  domestic  persecutions  of  those  who   op- 

*  The  father  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  reproached  him  frequently  in 
his  boyish  days  for  his  constant  attention  to  drawing,  and  wrote  on 
ihe  back  of  one  of  his  sketches  the  condemnatory  words,  "  Done  by 
Joshua  out  of  pure  idleness."  Mignard  distressed  liis  father,  the  sur- 
(<eon,  by  sketching  the  expressive  faces  of  his  patients  instead  of 
attending  to  their  diseases;  and  our  own  Opio,  when  a  boy,  and 
working  with  his  father  at  his  business  as  a  carpenter,  used  fre- 
quently to  excite  his  anger  by  drawing  with  red  chalk  on  the  deal 
boards  he  had  carefully  planed  for  his  trade. — Ed. 


YOUTHFUL  STUDIES.  53 

posed  his  inclinations.  No  poet  but  is  moved  with 
indignation  at  the  recollection  of  the  tutor  at  the  Port 
Royal  thrice  burning  the  romance  which  Racine  at 
length  got  by  heart ;  no  geometrician  but  bitterly  in- 
veighs against  the  father  of  Pascal  for  not  suffering  him 
to  study  Euclid,  which  he  at  length  understood  without 
studying.  The  father  of  Petrarch  cast  to  the  flames  the 
poetical  library  of  his  son,  amidst  the  shrieks,  the  groans, 
and  the  tears  of  the  youth.  Yet  this  burnt-offering 
neither  converted  Petrarch  into  a  sober  lawyer,  nor 
deprived  him  of  the  Roman  laurel.  The  uncle  of  Alfieri 
for  more  than  twenty  years  suppressed  the  poetical  char- 
acter of  this  noble  bard  ;  he  was  a  poet  without  knowing 
how  to  write  a  verse,  and  Nature,  like  a  hard  creditor, 
exacted,  with  redoubled  interest,  all  the  genius  which 
the  uncle  had  so  long  kept  from  her.  These  are  the 
men  whose  inherent  impulse  no  human  opposition,  and 
even  no  adverse  education,  can  deter  from  proving  them 
to  be  great  men. 

Let  us,  however,  be  just  to  the  parents  of  a  man  of 
genius ;  they  have  another  association  of  ideas  respect- 
ing him  than  ourselves.  We  see  a  great  man,  they  a 
disobedient  child ;  we  track  him  through  his  glory,  they 
are  wearied  by  the  sullen  resistance  of  one  who  is 
obscure  and  seems  useless.  The  career  of  genius  i? 
rarely  that  of  fortune  or  happiness  ;  and  the  father,  who 
himself  may  not  be  insensible  to  glory,  dreads  lest  his 
son  be  found  among  that  obscure  multitude,  that  popu- 
lace of  mean  artists,  self-deluded,  yet  self-dissatisfied, 
who  must  expire  at  the  barriers  of  mediocrity. 

If  the  youth  of  genius  be  struggling  with  a  concealed 
impulse,  he  will  often  be  thrown  into  a  train  of  secret 
instruction  which  no  master  can  impart.  Hippocrates 
profoundly  observed,  that  "  our  natures  have  not  been 
taught  us  by  any  master,"  The  faculty  which  the  youth 
of  genius  displays  in  after-life  may  exist  long  ere  it  is 


54  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

perceived ;  and  it  will  only  make  its  own  what  is  homoge- 
neous with  itself.  We  may  often  observe  how  the  mind 
of  this  youth  stubbornly  rejects  whatever  is  contrary  to 
its  habits,  and  aUen  to  its  aifections.  Of  a  solitary  char- 
acter, for  solitariness  is  the  wild  nurse  of  his  contempla- 
tions, he  is  fancifully  described  by  one  of  the  race — and 
here  fancies  are  facts : 

He  is  retired  as  noon-tide  dew,  • 

Or  fountain  in  a  noon-day  grove. 

The  romantic  Sidney  exclaimed,  "  Eagles  fly  alone, 
and  they  are  but  sheep  which  always  herd  together." 

As  yet  this  being,  in  the  first  rudiments  of  his  sensa- 
tions, is  touched  by  rapid  emotions,  and  disturbed  by  a 
vague  restlessness  ;  for  him  the  images  of  nature  are  yet 
dim,  and  he  feels  before  he  thinks;  for  imagination  pre- 
cedes reflection.  One  truly  inspired  unfolds  the  secret 
story — 

Endow'd  with  all  that  Nature  can  bestow, 

The  child  of  fancy  oft  in  silence  bends 

O'er  the  mixt  treasures  of  his  pregnant  breast 

With  conscious  pride.     From  thence  he  oft  resolves 

To  frame  he  knows  not  what  excelling  things  ; 

And  win  he  knows  not  what  sublime  reward 

Of  praise  and  wonder  I 

But  the  solitude  of  the  youth  of  genius  has  a  local  in- 
fluence ;  it  is  full  of  his  own  creations,  of  his  unmarked 
passions,  and  his  uncertain  thoughts.  The  titles  which 
he  gives  his  favourite  haunts  often  intimate  the  bent  of 
his  mind — its  employment,  or  its  purpose ;  as  Petrarch 
called  his  retreat  Linternum^  after  that  of  his  hero 
Scipio ;  and  a  young  poet,  from  some  favourite  descrip- 
tion in  Cowley,  called  a  spot  he  loved  to  muse  in,  "  Cow- 
ley's Walk." 

A  temperament  of  this  kind  has  been  often  mistaken 


rOUTHPUL   STUDIES.  55 

for  melancholy.*  "When  the  iutermission  of  my  stuJies 
allowed  me  leisure  for  recreation,"  says  Boyle  of  his  early 
(ife,  "  I  would  very  often  steal  away  from  all  company, 
and  spend  four  or  five  hours  alone  in  the  fields,  and 
think  at  random;  making  my  delighted  imagination 
the  busy  scene  where  some  romance  or  other  was  daily 
acted."  This  circumstance  alarmed  his  friends,  who  con- 
cluded that  he  was  overcome  with  a  growing  melan- 
choly, Alfieri  found  himself  in  this  precise  situation, 
and  experienced  these  undefinable  emotions,  when,  in 
his  first  travels  at  Marseilles,  his  lonely  spirit  only 
haunted  the  theatre  and  the  seashore :  the  tragic  drama 
was  then  casting  its  influences  over  his  unconscious 
genius.  Almost  every  evening,  after  bathing  in  the  sea, 
it  delighted  him  to  retreat  to  a  little  recess  where  the 
land  jutted  out ;  there  would  he  sit,  leaning  his  back 
against  a  high  rock,  which  he  tells  us,  "  concealed  from 
my  sight  every  part  of  the  land  behind  me,  while  before 
and  around  me  I  beheld  nothing  but  the  sea  and  the 
heavens  :  the  sun,  sinking  into  the  waves,  was  lighting 
up  and  embellishing  these  two  immensities ;  there  would 
I  pass  a  delicious  hour  of  fantastic  ruminations,  and 
there  I  should  have  composed  many  a  poem,  had  I  then 
known  how  to  write  either  in  verse  or  prose  in  any  lan- 
guao-e  whatever." 

An  uicident  of  this  nature  is  revealed  to  us  by  the 
other  noble  and  mighty  spirit  of  our  times,  who  could 
most  truly  exhibit  the  history  of  the  youth  of  genius,  and 
he  has  painted  forth  the  enthusiasm  of  the  boy  Tasso : — 

*  This  solemnity  of  manner  was  aped  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth  and 
James  I.  by  such  as  affected  scholar-like  habits,  and  is  frequently 
alluded  to  by  the  satirists  of  the  time.  Ben  Jonson,  in  his  ''  Every 
Man  in  his  Humour."  delineates  the  "country  gull,"  Master  Stephen, 
as  alfecting  "to  be  mightily  given  to  melancholy,"  and  receiving  the 
assurance,  "It's  your  only  fine  humour,  sir;  your  true  melancholy 
breeds  your  perfect  fine  wit,  sir." — Ed, 


56  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

From  my  very  birth 
My  soul  was  drunk  with  love,  which  did  pervade 
And  mingle  with  wliate'er  I  saw  on  earth ; 
Of  objects  all  inanimate  I  made 
Idols,  and  out  of  wild  and  lonely  flowers 
And  rocks  whereby  they  grew,  a  paradise, 
Where  I  did  lay  me  down  within  the  shado 
Of  waving  trees,  and  dream'd  uncounted  hours, 
Though  I  was  chid  for  wandering. 

The  youth  of  genius  will  be  apt  to  retire  from  the 
active  sports  of  his  mates.  Beattie  paints  himself  in  his 
own  IVIinstrel : 

Concourse,  and  noise,  and  toil  he  ever  fled, 

Nor  cared  to  mingle  in  the  clamorous  fray 
Of  squabbling  imps  ;  but  to  the  forest  sped. 

Bossuet  would  not  join  his  young  companions,  and  flew 
to  his  solitary  task,  while  the  classical  boys  avenged 
themselves  by  a  schoolboy's  villanous  pun :  stigmatising 
the  studious  application  of  Bossuet  by  the  hos  suetus 
aratro  which  frequent  flogging  had  made  them  classical 
enough  to  quote. 

The  learned  Huet  has  given  an  amusing  detail  of  the 
inventive  persecutions  of  his  schoolmates,  to  divert  him 
from  his  obstinate  love  of  study.  "  At  length,  in  order  to 
indulge  my  own  taste,  I  would  rise  with  the  sun,  while  they 
were  buried  in  sleep,  and  hide  myself  in  the  woods,  that 
I  might  read  and  study  in  quiet;"  but  they  beat  the 
bushes,  and  started  in  his  burrow  the  future  man  of  eru- 
dition. Sir  William  Jones  was  rarely  a  partaker  in  the 
active  sports  of  Harrow ;  it  was  said  of  Gray  that  he  was 
never  a  boy;  the  unhappy  Chatterton  and  Burns  were 
singulai'ly  serious  in  youth  ;*  as  Avere  Hobbes  and  Bacon. 

*  Dr.  Gregory  says  of  Chatterton,  "  Instead  of  the  thoughtless  levity 
of  childhood,  he  possosacd  the  pensiveness,  gravity,  and  melancholy  of 
maturerlifo.  He  was  frequently  so  lost  in  contemplation,  that  for  many 
days  togctlicr  he  would  say  but  very  little,  and  that  apparently  by  con- 
Btraint.     His  intimates  in  the  scliool  were  few,  and  those  of  the  most 


YOUTHFUL  STUDIES.  57 

Milton  has  preserved  for  us,  in  solemn  numbers,  his 
school-life — 

"When  I  was  yet  a  child,  no  childish  play 
To  me  was  pleasing:  all  my  mind  was  set 
Serious  to  learn  and  know,  and  tlience  to  do 
What  might  be  pubhc  good :  myself  I  thought 
Born  to  that  end,  born  to  promote  all  truth, 
All  righteous  tilings. 

It  is  remarkable  that  this  love  of  repose  and  musing  is 
retained  throughout  life.  A  man  of  fine  genius  is  rarely 
enamoui'ed  of  common  amusements  or  of  robust  exercises; 
and  he  is  usually  unadroit  where  dexterity  of  hand  or 
eye,  or  trivial  elegances,  are  required.  This  characteristic 
of  genius  was  discovered  by  Horace  in  that  Ode  which 
schoolboys  often  versify.  Beattie  has  expressly  told  us 
of  his  Minstrel, 

The  exploit  of  strength,  dexterity  or  speed 
To  him  nor  vanit}'  nor  joy  could  bring. 

Alfieri  said  he  could  never  be  taught  by  a  French  dan- 
cing-master, whose  art  made  him  at  once  shudder  and 
laugh.  Horace,  by  his  own  confession,  was  a  very  awk- 
ward rider,  and  the  poet  could  not  always  secure  a  seat 
on  his  mule :  Metastasio  humorously  complains  of  his 
gun ;  the  poetical  sportsman  could  only  frighten  the  hares 
and  partridges ;  the  truth  was,  as  an  elder  poet  sings, 

Instead  of  hounds  that  make  the  wooded  hills 
Talk  in  a  hundred  voices  to  tho  rills, 
I  hke  the  pleasing  cadence  of  a  line, 
Struck  by  the  concert  of  the  sacred  Nine. 

And  we  discover  the  true  "humour"  of  the  indolent  con- 
templative race  in  their  great  representatives  Yirgil  and 
Horace.      When   they  accompanied  Mecsenas   into    the 

serious  cast."  Of  Burns,  his  schoolmaster,  Mr.  Murdoch,  says — "  Rob- 
ert's countenance  was  generally  grave,  and  expressive  of  a  serious,  con 
templative,  and  thoughtful  mind." — Ed. 


58  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

country,  while  the  minister  amused  himself  at  tennis, 
the  two  bards  reposed  on  a  vernal  bank  amidst  the  freshr 
ness  of  the  shade.  The  younger  Pliny,  who  was  so  per- 
fect a  literary  character,  was  charmed  by  the  Roman 
mode  of  hunting,  or  rather  fowling  by  nets,  which  admit- 
ted him  to  sit  a  whole  day  with  his  tablets  and  stylus ; 
so,  says  he,  "  should  I  return  with  empty  nets,  my  tab- 
lets may  at  least  be  full."  Thomson  was  the  hero  of  his 
own  "  Castle  of  Indolence ;"  and  the  elegant  Waller  in- 
fuses into  his  luxurious  verses  the  true  feeling : 

Oh,  how  I  long  my  careless  limbs  to  lay 
Under  the  plantane  shade,  and  all  the  day 
Invoke  the  Muses  and  improve  my  vein. 

The  youth  of  genius,  whom  Beattie  has  drawn  after 
himself,  and  I  after  observation,  a  poet  of  great  genius, 
as  I  understand,  has  declared  to  be  "  too  effeminate 
and  timid,  and  too  miich  ti'oubled  with  delicate  nerves. 
The  greatest  poets  of  all  countries,"  he  continues,  "  have 
been  men  eminently  endowed  with  bodily  powers^  and 
rejoiced  and  excelled  in  all  manly  exercises.''''  May  not 
our  critic  of  northern  habits  have  often  mistaken  the  art 
of  the  great  poets  in  describing  such  "  manly  exercises 
or  bodily  powers,"  for  the  proof  of  their  "  rejoicing  and 
excelling  in  them  ?"  Poets  and  artists,  from  their  habits, 
are  not  usually  muscular  and  robust.*  Continuity  of 
thought,  absorbing  reverie,  and  sedentary  habits,  will 
not  combine  with  corporeal  skill  and  activity.  There  is 
also  a  constitutional  delicacy  which  is  too  often  the 
accomjDaniment  of  a  fine  intellect.     The  inconveniences 

*  "Dr.  Currie,  in  his  "Life  of  Burns,"  has  a  passage  which  may  be 
quoted  here :  "  Though  by  nature  of  an  athletic  form,  Burns  had  in 
his  constitution  the  peculiarities  and  the  delicacies  that  belong  to  the 
temperament  of  genius.  He  was  liable,  from  a  very  early  period  of 
life,  to  that  interruption  in  the  process  of  digestion  which  arises  from 
deep  and  anxious  thought,  and  which  is  sometimes  the  effect,  and 
sometimes  the  cause,  of  depression  of  spirits.'" — Ed. 


EARLY    HABITS.  59 

attached  to  the  inferior  sedentary  labourers  are  pailicipa- 
ted  in  by  men  of  genius  ;  the  analogy  is  obvious,  and  their 
fate  is  common.  Literary  men  may  be  included  in  Ra- 
mazzini's  "  Treatise  on  the  Diseases  of  Artizans."  Rous- 
seau has  described  the  labours  of  the  closet  as  enervating 
men,  and  weakening  the  constitution,  while  study  wears 
the  whole  machinery  of  man,  exhausts  the  spirits,  de- 
stroys his  strength,  and  renders  him  pusillanimous.*  But 
there  is  a  higher  principle  which  guides  us  to  declare, 
that  men  of  genius  should  not  excel  in  "  all  manly  exer- 
cises." Seneca,  whose  habits  were  completely  literary, 
admonishes  the  man  of  letters  that  "  Whatever  amuse- 
ment he  chooses,  he  should  not  slowly  return  from  those 
of  the  body  to  the  mind,  while  he  should  be  exercising 
the  latter  night  and  day."  Seneca  was  aware  that  "  to 
rejoice  and  excel  in  all  manly  exercises,"  would  in  some 
cases  intrude  into  the  habits  of  a  literary  man,  and  some- 
times be  even  ridiculous.  Mortimer,  once  a  celebrated 
artist,  was  tempted  by  his  athletic  frame  to  indulge  in 
frequent  violent  exercises ;  and  it  is  not  without  reason 
suspected,  that  habits  so  unfavourable  to  thought  and 
study  precluded  that  promising  genius  from  attaining  to 
the  maturity  of  his  talents,  however  he  might  have  suc- 
ceeded in  invigorating  his  physical  powers. 

But  to  our  solitude.  So  true  is  it  that  this  love  of 
loneliness  is  an  early  passion,  that  two  men  of  genius  of 
very  opposite  characters,  the  one  a  French  wit  and  the 
other  a  French  philosopher,  have  acknowledged  that 
they  have  felt  its  influence,  and  even  imagined  that  they 
had  discovered  its  cause.  The  Abb6  de  St.  Pierre,  in 
his  political  annals,  tells  us,  "  I  remember  to  have  heard 
old  Segrais  remark,  that  most  young  people  of  both 
sexes  had  at  one  time  of  their  lives,  generally  about 
seventeen   or   eighteen   years   of  age,  an  inclination  to 

♦  In  the  Preface  to  the  "  Narcisse." 


60  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

retire  from  the  world.  He  maintained  this  to  be  a 
S2:)ecies  of  melancholy,  and  humouro^^sly  called  it  the 
small-pox  of  the  mind,  because  scarce  one  in  a  thousand 
escajied  the  attack.  I  myself  have  had  this  distemper, 
but  am  not  much  marked  with  it." 

But  if  the  youth  of  genius  be  apt  to  retire  from  the 
oi'dinary  sports  of  his  mates,  he  will  often  substitute  for 
them  others,  which  are  the  reflections  of  those  favourite 
studies  which  are  haunting  his  young  imagination,  as 
men  in  their  dreams  repeat  the  conceptions  which  have 
habitually  interested  them.  The  amusements  of  such 
an  idler  have  often  been  analogous  to  his  later  jDursuits. 
Ariosto,  while  yet  a  schoolboy,  seems  to  have  been  very 
susceptible  of  poetry,  for  he  composed  a  sort  of  tragedy 
from  the  story  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe,  to  be  represented 
by  his  brothers  and  sisters,  and  at  this  time  also  de- 
lighted himself  in  translating  the  old  French  and  Spanish 
romances.  Sir  William  Jones,  at  Harrow,  divided  the 
fields  according  to  a  map  of  Greece,  and  to  each  school- 
fellow portioned  out  a  dominion  ;  and  when  wanting  a 
copy  of  the  Tempest  to  act  from,  he  supplied  it  from  his 
memory;  we  must  confess  that  the  boy  Jones  was  re- 
flecting in  his  amusements  the  cast  of  mind  he  disj)layed 
in  his  after-life,  and  evincing  that  felicity  of  memory  and 
taste  so  prevalent  in  his  literary  character.  Florian's 
earliest  years  were  passed  in  shooting  birds  all  day,  and 
reading  every  evening  an  old  translation  of  the  Iliad  : 
whenever  he  got  a  bird  remarkable  for  its  size  or  its 
plumage,  he  personified  it  by  one  of  the  names  of  his 
heroes,  and  raising  a  funeral  pyre,  consumed  the  body : 
collecting  the  ashes  in  an  urn,  he  presented  them  to  his 
grandfather,  with  a  narrative  of  his  Patroclus  or  Sar- 
pedon.  We  seem  here  to  detect,  reflected  in  his  boyish 
pports,  the  pleasing  genius  of  the  author  of  Nunia  Pom- 
pilius,  Gonsalvo  of  Cordova,  and  William  Tell.  Bacon, 
when  a  child,  was  so  remarkable  for  thoughtful  observa- 


BOYHOOD.  61 

tion,  that  Queen  Elizabeth  used  to  call  him  "  the  young 
lord-keeper."  The  boy  made  a  remarkable  reply,  when 
her  Majesty,  inquiring  of  him  his  age,  he  said,  that  "  He 
was  two  years  younger  than  her  Majesty's  happy  reign." 
The  boy  may  have  been  tutored ;  but  this  mixture  of 
gravity,  and  ingenuity,  and  political  courtiership,  un- 
doubtedly caught  from  his  father's  habits,  afterwards 
characterised  Lord  Bacon's  manhood.  I  once  read  the 
letter  of  a  contemporary  of  Hobbes,  where  I  found  that 
this  great  philosopher,  when  a  lad,  used  to  ride  on  packs 
of  skins  to  market,  to  sell  them  for  his  father,  who  was  a 
fellmonger ;  and  that  in  the  market-place  he  thus  early 
began  to  vent  his  private  opinions,  which  long  after- 
wards so  fully  appeared  in  his  writings. 

For  a  youth  to  be  distinguished  by  his  equals  is  per- 
haps a  criterion  of  talent.  At  that  moment  of  life,  with 
no  flattery  on  the  one  side,  and  no  artifice  on  the  other, 
all  emotion  and  no  reflection,  the  boy  who  has  obtained 
a  predominance  has  acquired  this  merely  by  native 
powers.  The  boyhood  of  Nelson  was  characterised  by 
events  congenial  with  those  of  his  after-days ;  and  his 
father  understood  his  character  when  he  declared  that,  "  in 
whatever  station  he  might  be  placed,  he  would  climb,  if 
possible,  to  the  top  of  the  tree."  Some  puerile  anecdotes 
which  Franklin  remembered  of  himself,  betray  the  inven- 
tion and  the  Arm  intrepidity  of  his  character,  and  even 
perhaps  his  carelessness  of  means  to  obtain  a  purpose. 
In  boyhood  he  felt  a  desire  for  adventure ;  but  as  his 
father  would  not  consent  to  a  sea  life,  he  made  the  river 
near  him  represent  the  ocean  ;  he  lived  on  the  water, 
and  was  the  daring  Columbus  of  a  schoolboy's  boat.  A 
part  Avhere  he  and  his  mates  stood  to  angle,  in  time 
became  a  quagmire  :  in  the  course  of  one  day,  the  infant 
projector  thought  of  a  wharf  for  them  to  stand  on,  and 
raised  it  with  a  heap  of  stones  deposited  there  for  the 
building  of  a  house.     With  that   sort  of  practical  wis- 


32  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

dom,  or  Ulyssean  cunning,  which  marked  his  mature 
character,  Franklin  raised  his  wharf  at  the  expense  of 
anothei''s  house.  His  contrivances  to  aid  his  puny 
labourers,  with  his  resolution  not  to  quit  the  great  work 
till  it  was  effected,  seem  to  strike  out  to  us  the  in- 
vention and  decision  of  his  future  character.  But 
the  qualities  which  would  attract  the  companions  of  a 
schoolboy  may  not  be  those  which  are  essential  to  fine 
genius.  The  captain  or  leader  of  his  schoolmates  is  not 
to  be  disregarded ;  but  it  is  the  sequestei-ed  boy  who 
may  chance  to  be  the  artist  or  the  literary  charac- 
ter. Some  facts  which  have  been  recorded  of  men  of 
genius  at  this  period  are  remarkable.  We  are  told  by 
Miss  Stewart  that  Johnson,  when  a  boy  at  the  free- 
school,  appeared  "a  huge  overgrown  misshapen  strip- 
ling ;"  but  was  considered  as  a  stupendous  stripling ; 
"  for  even  at  that  early  period  of  life,  Johnson  maintained 
his  opinions  with  the  same  sturdy,  dogmatical,  and  ar- 
rogant fierceness."  The  puerile  characters  of  Lord  Bo- 
lingbroke  and  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  schoolfellows  and 
rivals,  were  observed  to  prevail  through  their  after-life ; 
the  liveliness  and- brilliancy  of  Bolingbroke  appeared  in 
his  attacks  on  Walpole,  whose  solid  and  industrious 
qualities  triumphed  by  resistance.  A  parallel  instance 
might  be  pointed  out  in  two  great  statesmen  of  our  own 
days ;  in  the  wisdom  of  the  one  and  the  wit  of  the  other 
— men  whom  nature  made  rivals,  and  time  made  friends 
or  enemies,  as  it  happened.  A  curious  observer,  in  look- 
ing over  a  collection  of  the  Cambridge  poems,  which 
were  formerly  composed  by  its  students,  has  remarked 
that  "  Cowley  from  tlie  first  was  quaint,  Milton  sublime, 
and  Barrow  copious."  If  then  the  characteristic  dispo- 
sition may  reveal  itself  thus  early,  it  affords  a  principle 
which  ought  not  to  be  neglected  at  this  obscure  period 
of  youth. 

Is  there  then  a  period  in  youth  which  yields  decisive 


BOYHOOD.  63 

marks  of  the  character  of  genius  ?  The  natures  of  men 
are  as  various  as  their  fortunes.  Some,  like  diamonds, 
must  wait  to  receive  their  splendour  from  the  slow 
touches  of  the  polisher,  while  others,  resembling  pearls, 
appear  at  once  born  with  their  beauteous  lustre. 

Among  the  inauspicious  circumstances  is  the  feeble- 
ness of  the  first  attempts ;  and  we  must  not  decide  on 
the  talents  of  a  young  man  by  his  first  works.  Dryden 
and  Swift  might  have  been  deterred  from  authorship 
had  their  earliest  pieces  decided  their  fate.  Smollett, 
before  he  knew  which  way  his  genius  would  conduct 
him,  had  early  conceived  a  high  notion  of  his  talents 
for  dramatic  poetry :  his  tragedy  of  the  Regicide  was 
refused  by  Garrick,  whom  for  a  long  time  he  could 
not  forgive,  but  continued  to  abuse  our  Roscius,  through 
his  works  of  genius,  for  having  discountenanced  his 
first  work,  which  had  none.  Racine's  earliest  compo- 
sition, as  we  may  judge  by  some  fragments  his  son 
has  preserved,  remarkably  contrasts  with  his  wri- 
tings; for  these  fragments  abound  with  those  points 
and  conceits  which  he  afterwards  abhorred.  The  ten- 
der author  of  "Andromache"  could  not  have  been 
discovered  while  exhausting  himself  in  running  after 
concetti  as  surj^rising  as  the  worst  parts  of  Cowley,  in 
whose  spirit  alone  he  could  have  hit  on  this  perplexing 
concetto,  descriptive  of  Aurora :  "  Fille  du  Jour,  qui  nais 
devant  ton  pero  !" — "  Daughter  of  Day,  but  born  before 
thy  father!"  Gibbon  betrayed  none  of  the  force  and 
magnitude  of  his  powers  in  his  "  Essay  on  Literature," 
or  his  attempted  "  History  of  Switzerland."  Johnson's 
cad'?r.Cf)d  prose  is  not  recognisable  in  the  humbler  sim- 
plicity of  his  earliest  years.  Many  authors  have  begun 
unsuccessfully  the  walk  they  afterwai'ds  excelled  in. 
Raphael,  when  he  first  drew  his  meagre  forms  under 
Perugino,  had  not  yet  conceived  one  line  of  that  ideal 
beauty  which  one  day  he  of  all  men  could  alone  execute. 


04  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Who  could  have  imagined,  in  examining  the  Dream  of 
Raphael,  that  the  same  pencil  could  hereafter  have  poured 
out  the  miraculous  Transfiguration  ?  Or  that,  in  the 
imitative  pupil  of  Hudson,  our  country  was  at  length  to 
pride  herself  on  another  Raphael  ?  * 

Even  the  manhood  of  genius  may  pass  unobserved  by 
his  companions,  and,  like  JEneas,  he  may  be  hidden  in  a 
cloud  amidst  his  associates.  The  celebrated  Fabius 
Maximus  in  his  boyhood  was  called  in  derision  "the 
little  sheep,"  from  the  meekness  and  gravity  of  his  dis- 
position. His  sedateness  and  taciturnity,  his  indiffei'ence 
to  juvenile  amusement,  his  slowness  and  difficulty  in 
learning,  and  his  ready  submission  to  his  equals,  induced 
them  to  consider  him  as  one  irrecoverably  stupid.  The 
greatness  of  mind,  unalterable  courage,  and  invincible 
character,  which  Fabius  afterwards  displayed,  they  then 
imagined  had  lain  concealed  under  the  apparent  contrary 
qualities.  The  boy  of  genius  may  indeed  seem  slow  and 
dull  even  to  the  phlegmatic ;  for  thoughtful  and  observ- 
ing dispositions  conceal  themselves  in  timorous  silent 
characters,  who  have  not  yet  experienced  their  strength ; 
and  that  assiduous  love,  which  cannot  tear  itself  away 
from  the  secret  instruction  it  is  perpetually  imbibing, 
cannot  be  easily  distinguished  from  the  pertinacity  of  the 
mere  plodder.  We  often  hear,  from  the  early  compan- 
ions of  a  man  of  genius,  that  at  school  he  appeared  heavy 
and  unpromising.  Rousseau  imagined  that  the  child- 
hood of  some  men  is  accompanied  by  this  seeming  and 
deceitful  dulness,  which  is  the  sign  of  a  profound  genius  ; 
and  Roger  Ascham  has  placed  among  "  the  best  natures 

*  Hudson  was  tlio  fashionable  portrait-painter  who  succeeded 
Knollcr,  and  made  a  groat  reputation  and  fortune  ;  but  he  was  a  very 
mean  artist,  who  merely  copied  the  peculiarities  of  his  predecessor 
without  his  genius.  His  stiff  hard  stylo  was  formality  itself;  but  waa 
approved  in  an  ago  of  formalism ;  the  earlier  half  of  the  last  century.— 
Ed. 


BOYHOOD.  65 

for  learning,  the  sad-natured  and  liard-witted  child  ;"  that 
is,  the  thoughtful,  or  the  melancholic,  and  the  slow.  The 
young  painters,  to  ridicule  the  persevering  labours  of 
Domenichino,  which  were  at  first  heavy  and  unpromising, 
called  him  "  the  great  ox  ;"  and  Passeri,  while  he  has 
ha])pily  expressed  the  still  labours  of  his  concealed  genius, 
sua  taciturna  lentezza,  his  silent  slowness,  expresses  his 
surprise  at  the  accounts  he  received  of  the  early  life  of 
this  great  artist.  "  It  is  difficult  to  believe,  what  many 
assert,  that  from  the  beginning,  this  great  painter  had  a 
ruggedness  about  him  which  entirely  incapacitated  him 
from  learning  his  profession ;  and  they  have  heard  from 
himself  that  he  quite  despaired  of  success.  Yet  I  cannot 
comprehend  how  such  vivacious  talents,  with  a  mind  so 
finely  organised,  and  accompanied  with  such  favourable 
dispositions  for  the  art,  would  show  such  signs  of  utter 
incapacity  ;  I  rather  think  that  it  is  a  mistake  in  the 
proper  knowledge  of  genius,  which  some  imagine  indi- 
cates itself  most  decisively  by  its  sudden  vehemence, 
showing  itself  like  lightning,  and  like  lightning  passing 
away." 

A  parallel  case  we  find  in  Goldsmith,  who  passed 
through  an  unpromising  youth ;  he  declared  that  he  was 
never  attached  to  literature  till  he  was  thirty ;  that  poetry 
had  no  peculiar  charms  for  him  till  that  age  ;*  and,  indeed, 
to  his  latest  hour  he  was  surprising  his  friends  by  pro- 
ductions which  they  had  imagined  he  was  incapable  of 
composing.  Hume  was  considered,  for  his  sobriety  and 
assiduity,  as  competent  to  become  a  steady  merchant ;  and 
it  was  said  of  Boileau  that  he  had  no  great  understanding, 
but  woukl  speak  ill  of  no  one.  This  circumstance  of  the 
character  in  youtli  being  entirely  mistaken,  or  entirely 
opposite  to  the  subsequent  one  of  maturer  life,  has  been 

*  This  is  a  remarkable  expression  from  Goldsmith :  but  it  is  much 
more  so  when  we  hear  it  from  Lord  Byron.     See  a  note  in  the  follow- 
ing chapter,  on  "  The  First  Studies,"  p.  81. 
5 


QQ  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

noticed  of  many.  Even  a  discerning  parent  or  mastei 
has  entirely  failed  to  develope  the  genius  of  the  youth, 
who  has  afterwards  ranked  among  eminent  men ;  we 
ought  as  little  to  decide  from  early  unfavourable  appear- 
ances, as  from  inequality  of  talent.  The  great  Isaac 
Barrow's  father  used  to  say,  that  if  it  pleased  God  to 
take  from  him  any  of  his  children,  he  hoped  it  might  be 
Isaac,  as  the  least  promising ;  and  during  the  three  years 
Barrow  passed  at  the  Charter-house,  he  was  remarkable 
only  for  the  utter  negligence  of  his  studies  and  of  his 
person.  The  mother  of  Sheridan,  herself  a  literary 
female,  pronounced  early  that  he  was  the  dullest  and 
most  hopeless  of  her  sons.  Bodmer,  at  the  head  of  the 
literary  class  in  Switzerland,  who  had  so  frequently  dis- 
covered and  animated  the  literary  youths  of  his  country, 
could  never  detect  the  latent  genius  of  Gesner:  after  a 
repeated  examination  of  the  young  man,  he  put  his 
pai'ents  in  despair  with  the  hopeless  award  that  a  mind 
of  so  ordinary  a  cast  must  confine  itself  to  mere  writing 
and  accompts.  One  fact,  however,  Bodmer  bad  over- 
looked when  he  pronounced  the  fate  of  our  poet  and 
artist — the  dull  youth,  who  could  not  retain  barren  words, 
discovered  an  active  fancy  in  the  image  of  things.  While 
at  his  grammar  lessons,  as  it  happened  to  Lucian,  he  was 
employing  tedious  hours  in  modelling  in  wax,  groups  of 
men,  animals,  and  other  figures,  the  rod  of  the  pedagogue 
often  interrupted  the  fingers  of  our  infant  moulder,  who 
never  ceased  working  to  amuse  his  little  sisters  with  his 
waxen  creatures,  which  constituted  all  his  happiness. 
Those  arts  of  imitation  were  already  possessing  the  soul 
of  the  boy  Gesner,  to  which  afterwards  it  became  so  en- 
tirely devoted. 

Thus  it  happens  that  in  the  first  years  of  life  the  educa- 
tion of  the  youth  may  not  be  the  education  of  his  genius; 
he  lives  unknown  to  himself  a;i(l  ollu  is.  in  all  these 
cases  nature  had  dropped  the  seeds  in  the  soil;  but  even 


BOYHOOD.  67 

a  happy  disposition  must  be  concealed  amidst  adverse 
circumstances  :  I  repeat,  that  genius  can  only  make  that 
Its  own  which  is  homogeneous  with  its  nature.  It  has 
happened  to  some  men  of  genius  during  a  long  period  of 
their  lives,  that  an  unsettled  impulse,  unable  to  discover 
the  object  of  its  aptitude,  a  thirst  and  fever  in  the  tem- 
perament of  too  sentient  a  being,  which  cannot  find  the 
occupation  to  which  only  it  can  attach  itself,  has  sunk 
into  a  melancholy  and  querulous  spirit,  weary  with  the 
burthen  of  existence  ;  but  the  instant  the  latent  talent 
had  declared  itself,  his  first  work,  the  eager  ofispring  of 
desire  and  love,  has  astonished  the  world  at  once  with 
the  birth  and  the  maturity  of  genius. 

We  are  told  that  Pelegrino  Tibaldi,  who  afterwards 
obtained  the  glorious  title  of  "  the  reformed  Michael  An- 
gelo,"  long  felt  the  strongest  internal  dissatisfaction  at 
his  own  proficiency,  and  that  one  day,  in  melancholy  and 
despair,  he  had  retired  from  the  city,  resolved  to  starve 
himself  to  death  ;  his  friend  discovered  him,  and  having 
persuaded  him  to  change  his  pursuits  from  painting  to 
architecture,  he  soon  rose  to  eminence.  This  story  D'Ar- 
genville  throws  some  doubt  over ;  but  as  Tibaldi  during 
twenty  years  abstained  from  his  pencil,  a  singular  cir- 
cumstance seems  explained  by  an  extraordinary  occur- 
rence. Tasso,  with  feverish  anxiety  pondered  on  five 
different  subjects  before  he  could  decide  in  the  choice  of 
his  epic  ;  the  same  embarrassment  was  long  the  fate  of 
Gibbon  on  the  subject  of  his  history.  Some  have  sunk 
mto  a  deplorable  state  of  utter  languishment,  from  the 
circumstance  of  being  deprived  of  the  means  of  pursuing 
their  beloved  study,  as  in  the  case  of  the  chemist  Berg- 
man. His  friends,  to  gain  him  over  to  the  more  lucra- 
tive professions,  deprived  him  of  his  books  of  natural 
history ;  a  plan  which  nearly  proved  fatal  to  the  youth, 
who  with  declining  health  quitted  the  university.  At 
length,  ceasing  to  struggle  with   the   conflicting  desire 


eS  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

within  him,  his  renewed  enthusiasm  for  his  favourite 
science  restored  the  health  he  had  lost  in  abandoning  it. 

It  was  the  view  of  the  tomb  of  Virgil  which  so  power- 
fully influenced  the  innate  genius  of  Boccaccio,  and  fixed 
his  instant  decision.  As  yet  young,  and  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  N^aples,  wandering  for  recreation,  he  reached  the 
tomb  of  the  Mantuan.  Pausing  before  it,  his  youthful 
mind  began  to  meditate.  Struck  by  the  universal  glory  of 
that  great  name,  he  lamented  his  own  fortune  to  be  occu- 
pied by  the  obscure  details  of  merchandise ;  already  he 
sighed  to  emulate  the  fame  of  the  Roman,  and  as  Villani 
tells  us,  from  that  day  he  abandoned  forever  the  occupa- 
tions of  commerce,  dedicating  himself  to  literature. 
Proctor,  the  lost  Phidias  of  our  country,  would  often  say, 
that  he  should  never  have  quitted  his  mercantile  situa- 
tion, but  for  the  accidental  sight  of  Barry's  picture  of 
"  Venus  rising  from  the  Sea  ;"  a  picture  which  produced 
so  immediate  an  effect  on  his  mind,  that  it  determined 
him  to  quit  a  lucrative  occupation.  Surely  we  cannot 
account  for  such  sudden  eflusions  of  the  mind,  and  such 
instant  decisions,  but  by  the  principle  of  that  predispo- 
sition which  only  waits  for  an  occasion  to  declare  itself. 

Abundant  facts  exhibit  genius  unequivocally  discover- 
ing itself  in  youth.  In  general,  perhaps,  a  master-mind 
exhibits  precocity.  "Whatever  a  young  man  at  first 
applies  himself  to,  is  commonly  his  delight  afterwards." 
This  remai'k  was  made  by  Hartley,  who  has  related  an 
anecdote  of  the  infancy  of  his  genius,  which  indicated  the 
manhood.  He  declared  to  his  daughter  that  the  inten- 
tion of  writing  a  book  u]>on  the  nature  of  man,  was  con- 
cciived  in  his  mind  wlien  he  M^as  a  very  little  boy — when 
swinging  backwards  and  forwards  upon  a  gate,  not  more 
than  nine  or  ten  years  old  ;  he  was  then  meditating  upon 
the  nature  of  his  own  mind,  liow  man  Avas  made,  and  for 
what  future  end.  Such  was  tlie  true  origin,  in  a  boy  of 
ten  years  old,  of  liis  celebrated  book  on  "  The  Frame,  the 


EARLY  BIAS.  69 

Duty,  and  the  Expectation  of  Man."  John  Hmiter  con- 
ceived his  notion  of  the  principle  of  life,  which  to  his 
last  day  formed  the  subject  of  his  inquiries  and  experi- 
ments, when  he  was  very  young ;  for  at  that  period  of 
life,  Mr.  Abernethy  tell  us,  he  began  his  observations  on 
the  incubated  egg,  which  suggested  or  corroborated  his 
opinions. 

A  learned  friend,  and  an  observer  of  men  of  science, 
has  supplied  me  with  a  remark  highly  deserving  notice. 
It  is  an  observation  that  will  generally  hold  good,  that 
the  most  important  systems  of  theory,  however  late  they 
may  be  published,  have  been  formed  at  a  very  eai'ly 
period  of  life.  This  important  observation  may  be  veri- 
fied by  some  striking  facts.  A  most  curious  one  will  be 
found  in  Lord  Bacon's  letter  to  Father  Fulgentio,  where 
he  gives  an  account  of  his  projecting  his  philosophy 
thirty  years  before,  during  his  youth.  Milton  from  early 
youth  mused  on  the  composition  of  an  epic.  De  Thou 
has  himself  told  us,  that  from  his  tender  youth  his  mind 
was  full  of  the  idea  of  composing  a  history  of  his  own 
times ;  and  his  whole  life  was  passed  in  pi-eparation,  and 
in  a  continued  accession  of  materials  for  a  future  period. 
From  the  age  of  twenty,  Montesquieu  was  preparing  the 
materials  of  L^Esprit  des  Loix,  by  extracts  from  the 
immense  volumes  of  civil  law.  Tillemont's  vast  labours 
were  traced  out  in  his  mind  at  the  early  age  of  nineteen, 
on  reading  Baronius ;  and  some  of  the  finest  passages  in 
Racine's  tragedies  were  composed  while  a  pupil,  wander- 
ing in  the  woods  of  the  Port-Royal.  So  trvie  is  it  that  the 
seeds  of  many  of  our  great  literary  and  scientific  works 
were  lying,  for  many  years  antecedent  to  their  being 
given  to  the  world,  in  a  latent  state  of  germination.* 

*  I  need  not  to  be  reminded,  that  I  am  not  worth  mentioning  among 
the  illustrioiis  men  who  have  long  formed  the  famihar  subjects  of  my 
delightful  researches.  But  with  the  middling  as  well  as  with  the 
great,  the  same  habits  must  operate.     Early  in  life,  I  was  struck  by 


70  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

The  predisposition  of  genius  has  declared  itself  in 
painters  and  poets,  who  were  snch  before  they  understood 
the  nature  of  colours  and  the  arts  of  verse ;  and  this 
vehement  propensity,  so  mysteriously  constitutional,  may 
be  traced  in  other  intellectual  characters  besides  those 
which  belong  to  the  class  of  imagination.  It  was  said 
that  Pitt  was  horn  a  minister ;  the  late  Dr.  Shaw  I 
always  considered  as  one  horn  a  naturalist,  and  I  know  a 
great  literary  antiquary  who  seems  to  me  to  have  been 
also  horn  such ;  for  the  passion  of  curiosity  is  as  intense 
a  faculty,  or  instinct,  with  some  casts  of  mind,  as  is  that 
of  invention  with  poets  and  painters :  I  confess  that  to 
me  it  is  genius  in  a  form  in  which  genius  has  not  yet  been 
suspected  to  appear.  One  of  the  biographers  of  Sir 
Hans  Sloane  expresses  himself  in  this  manner : — "  Our 
author's  thirst  for  knowledge  seems  to  have  been  horn 
with  him,  so  that  his  Cahinet  of  Marities  may  be  said  to 
have  commenced  with  his  heing.''"'  This  strange  meta- 
phorical style  has  only  confused  an  obscure  truth. 
Sloane,  early  in  life,  felt  an  irresistible  impulse  which 
inspired  him  with  the  most  enlarged  views  of  the  pro- 
ductions of  nature,  and  he  exulted  in  their  accomplish- 
ment ;  for  in  his  will  he  has  solemnly  recorded,  that  his 
collections  were  the  fruits  of  his  early  devotion,  having 
had  from  my  youth  a  strong  inclination  to  the  study  of 
plants  and  all  other  productions  of  nature.    The  vehe- 

tlie  inductive  philosophy  of  Bacon,  and  sought  after  a  Moral  Experi- 
mental Philosophy ;  and  I  had  then  in  my  mind  an  observation  of 
Lord  Bolingbroko's,  for  I  see  I  quoted  it  thirty  years  ago,  that  "Ab- 
stract or  general  propositions,  though  never  so  true,  appear  obscure  or 
doubtful  to  us  very  often  till  they  are  explained  by  examples."  So 
far  back  aa  in  1193  I  published  "A  Dissertation  on  Anecdotes,"  with 
the  simplicity  of  a  young  votary  ;  there  I  deduced  results,  and  threw 
out  a  magnificent  project  not  very  practicable.  From  that  time  to  the 
hour  I  am  now  writing,  my  metal  has  been  running  in  this  mould, 
and  I  still  keep  casting  philoaophy  into  anecdotes,  and  anecdotes  into 
philosophy.     As  I  began  I  fear  I  shall  end. 


YOUTHFUL  STUDIES.  71 

ment  passion  of  Peiresc  for  knowledge,  according  to 
accounts  which  Gassendi  received  from  old  men  who  had 
known  him  as  a  child,  broke  out  as  soon  as  he  had  been 
taught  his  alphabet ;  for  then  his  delight  was  to  be 
handling  books  and  papers,  and  his  perpetual  inquiries 
after  their  contents  obliged  them  to  invent  something  to 
quiet  the  child's  insatiable  curiosity,  who  was  hurt  when 
told  that  he  had  not  the  capacity  to  understand  them. 
He  did  not  study  as  an  ordinary  scholar,  for  he  never 
read  but  with  perpetual  researches.  At  ten  years  of  age, 
his  passion  for  the  studies  of  antiquity  was  kindled  at 
the  sight  of  some  ancient  coins  dug  up  in  his  neighbour- 
hood ;  then  that  vehement  passion  for  knowledge  "  began 
to  burn  like  fire  in  a  forest,"  as  Gassendi  happily  de- 
scribes the  fervour  and  amplitude  of  the  mind  of  this  man 
of  vast  learning.  Bayle,  who  was  an  experienced  judge 
in  the  history  of  genius,  observes  on  two  fiiars,  one  of 
whom  was  haunted  by  a  strong  disposition  to  gene- 
alogical^ and  the  other  to  geographical  pursuits,  that, 
"  let  a  man  do  what  he  will,  if  nature  incline  us  to  cer- 
tain things,  there  is  no  preventing  the  gratification  of 
our  desire,  though  it  lies  hid  under  a  monk's  frock."  It 
is  not,  therefore,  as  the  world  is  apt  to  imagine,  only 
poets  and  painters  for  whom  is  reserved  this  restless  and 
impetuous  propensity  for  their  particular  pursuits;  I 
claim  it  for  the  man  of  science  as  well  as  for  the  man  of 
imagination.  And  I  confess  that  I  consider  this  strong 
bent  of  the  mind  in  men  eminent  in  pursuits  in  which 
imagination  is  little  concerned,  and  whom  men  of  genius 
have  chosen  to  remove  so  far  from  their  class,  as  another 
gifted  aptitude.  They,  too,  share  in  the  glorious  fever 
of  genius,  and  we  feel  how  just  was  the  expression 
formerly  used,  of  "  their  thirst  for  knowledge." 

But  to  return  to  the  men  of  genius  who  answer  more 
strictly  to  the  popular  notion  of  inventors.  We  have 
Boccaccio's  own  words  for  a  proof  of  his  early  natural 


72  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

tendency  to  tale-writing,  in  a  passage  of  his  genealogy 
of  the  gods : — "  Before  seven  years  of  age,  when  as  yet  I 
had  met  with  no  stories,  was  without  a  master,  and  hardly 
knew  my  letters,  I  had  a  natural  talent  for  fiction,  and 
produced  some  little  tales."  Thus  the  "Decamerone" 
was  appearing  much  earlier  than  we  suppose.  Descartes, 
while  yet  a  boy,  indulged  such  habits  of  deep  meditation, 
that  he  was  nicknamed  by  his  companions  "  The  Philoso- 
pher," always  questioning,  and  ever  settling  the  cause 
and  the  effect.  He  was  twenty-five  years  of  age  before 
he  left  the  army,  but  the  propensity  for  meditation  had 
been  early  formed ;  and  he  has  himself  given  an  account 
of  the  pursuits  which  occupied  his  youth,  and  of  the  pro- 
gress of  his  genius ;  of  the  secret  struggle  which  he  so 
long  maintained  with  his  own  mind,  wandering  in  con- 
cealment over  the  world  for  more  than  twenty  years, 
and,  as  he  says  of  himself,  like  the  statuary  labouring  to 
draw  out  a  Minerva  from  the  marble  block..  Michael 
Angelo,  as  yet  a  child,  wherever  he  went,  busied  himself 
in  drawing ;  and  when  his  noble  parents,  hurt  that  a  man 
of  genius  was  disturbing  the  line  of  their  ancestry,  forced 
him  to  relinquish  the  pencil,  the  infant  artist  flew  to  the 
chisel :  the  art  which  was  in  his  soul  would  not  allow  of 
idle  hands.  Lope  de  Vega,  Velasquez,  Ariosto,  and 
Tasso,  are  all  said  to  have  betrayed  at  their  school-tasks 
the  most  marked  indications  of  their  subsequent  charac- 
teristics. 

This  decision  of  the  impulse  of  genius  is  apparent  in 
Murillo.  This  young  artist  was  undistinguished  at  the 
place  of  his  birth.  A  brother  artist  returning  home  from 
London,  where  he  had  studied  under  Van  Dyk,  surprised 
Murillo  by  a  chaste,  and  to  him  hitherto  unknown,  man- 
ner. Listantly  he  conceived  the  project  of  quitting  bis 
native  Seville  and  flying  to  Italy — the  fever  of  genius 
broke  forth  with  all  its  restlessness.  But  he  was  desti- 
tute of  the  must  ordinary  incans  to  pursue  a  journey,  and 


YOUTHPUL   STUDIES.  73 

forced  to  an  expedient,  he  purchased  a  piece  of  canvas, 
which  dividing  into  parts,  he  painted  on  each  figures  of 
saints,  landscapes,  and  flowers — an  humble  merchandise 
of  art  adapted  to  the  taste  and  devout  feelings  of  the 
times,  and  which  were  readily  sold  to  the  adventurers  to 
the  Indies.  With  these  small  means  he  departed,  having 
commuijicated  his  project  to  no  one  except  to  a  beloved 
sister,  whose  tears  could  not  prevail  to  keep  the  lad  at 
home;  the  impetuous  impulse  had  blinded  him  to  the 
perils  and  the  impracticability  of  his  wild  project.  He 
reached  Madrid,  where  the  great  Velasquez,  his  country- 
man, was  struck  by  the  ingenuous  simplicity  of  the  youth, 
who  urgently  requested  letters  for  Rome ;  but  when  that 
noble  genius  understood  the  purport  of  this  romantic 
journey,  Velasquez  assured  him  that  he  need  not  proceed 
to  Italy  to  learn  the  art  he  loved.  The  great  master 
opened  the  royal  galleries  to  the  youth,  and  cherished 
Ms  studies.  Murillo  returned  to  his  native  city,  where, 
from  his  obscurity,  he  had  never  been  missed,  having 
ever  lived  a  retired  life  of  silent  labour ;  but  this  painter 
of  nature  returned  to  make  the  city  which  had  not  no- 
ticed his  absence  the  theatre  of  his  glory. 

The  same  imperious  impulse  drove  Callot,  at  the  age 
of  twelve  years,  from  his  father's  roof  His  parents,  from 
prejudices  of  birth,  had  conceived  that  the  art  of  engrav- 
ing was  one  beneath  the  studies  of  their  son ;  but  the  boy 
had  listened  to  stories  of  the  miracles  of  Italian  art,  and 
with  a  curiosity  predominant  over  any  self-consideration, 
one  morning  the  genius  flew  away.  Many  days  had  not 
elapsed,  when  finding  himself  in  the  utmost  distress,  with 
a  gang  of  gipsies  he  arrived  at  Florence.  A  merchant 
of  Nancy  discovered  him,  and  returned  the  reluctant  boy 
of  genius  to  his  home.  Again  he  flies  to  Italy,  and  again 
his  brother  discovers  him,  and  reconducts  him  to  his  pa- 
rents. The  fiither,  whose  patience  and  forgiveness  were 
now  exhausted,  permitted  his  son  to  become  the  most 


74  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

original  genius  of  French  art — one  who,  in  his  viva- 
cious groups,  the  touch  of  his  graver,  and  the  natural 
expression  of  his  figures,  anticipated  the  creations  of 
Hogarth. 

Facts  of  this  decisive  character-are  abundant.  See  the 
boy  Nanteuil  hiding  himself  in  a  tree  to  pursue  the  de- 
lightful exercise  of  his  pencil,  while  his  parents  are  averse 
to  their  son  practising  his  young  art !  See  Handel,  in- 
tended for  a  doctor  of  the  civil  laws,  and  whom  no  pa- 
rental discouragement  could  deprive  of  his  enthusiasm, 
for  ever  touching  harpsichords,  and  having  secretly  con- 
veyed a  musical  instrument  to  a  retired  apartment,  listen 
to  him  when,  sitting  through  the  night,  he  awakens  his 
harmonious  spirit !  Observe  Ferguson,  the  child  of  a 
peasant,  acquiring  the  art  of  reading  without  any  one 
suspecting  it,  by  listening  to  his  father  teaching  his  bro- 
ther ;  observe  him  making  a  wooden  watch  without  the 
slightest  knowledge  of  mechanism ;  and  while  a  shepherd, 
studying,  like  an  ancient  Chaldean,  the  phenomena  of  the 
heavens,  on  a  celestial  globe  formed  by  his  own  hand. 
That  great  mechanic,  Smeaton,  when  a  child,  disdained 
the  ordinary  playthings  of  his  age  ;  he  collected  the  tools 
of  workmen,  observed  them  at  their  work,  and  asked 
questions  till  he  could  work  himself.  One  day,  having 
watched  some  millwrights,  the  child  was  shortly  after,  to 
the  distress  of  the  family,  discovered  in  a  situation  of  ex- 
treme danger,  fixing  up  at  the  top  of  a  barn  a  rude  wind- 
mill. Many  circumstances  of  this  nature  occurred  before 
his  sixth  year.  His  father,  an  attorney,  sent  him  up  to 
London  to  be  brought  up  to  t lie  same  profession ;  but  he 
declared  that  "the  study  of  the  law  did  not  suit  the  bent 
of  his  genius  " — a  term  he  frequently  used.  He  addressed 
a  strong  memorial  to  his  father,  to  show  his  utter  incom- 
petency to  study  law ;  and  the  good  sense  of  the  father 
abandoned  Smeaton  "  to  the  bent  of  his  genius  in  his  own 
way."     Such  is  the  history  of  the  man  who  raised  the 


YOUTHFUL   STUDIES.  75 

Eddystone  Lighthouse,  in  the  midst  of  the  waves,  like 
the  rock  on  which  it  stands. 

Can  we  hesitate  to  believe  that  in  such  minds  there 
was  a  resistless  and  mysterious  propensity,  "growing 
with  the  growth"  of  these  youths,  who  seem  to  have 
been  placed  out  of  the  influence  of  that  casual  excite- 
ment, or  any  other  of  those  sources  of  genius,  so  frequently 
assigned  for  its  production  ? 

Yet  these  cases  are  not  more  striking  than  the  one 
related  of  the  Abbe  La  Caille,  who  ranked  among  the 
first  astronomers  of  the  age.  La  Caille  was  the  son  of 
the  parish  clerk  of  a  village.  At  the  age  of  ten  years 
his  father  sent  him  every  evening  to  ring  the  church 
bell,  but  the  boy  always  returned  home  late :  his  father 
was  angry,  and  beat  him,  and  still  the  boy  returned 
an  hour  after  he  had  rung  the  bell.  The  father  suspect- 
ing something  mysterious  in  his  conduct,  one  evening 
watched  him.  He  saw  his  son  ascend  the  steeple,  ring 
the  bell  as  usual,  and  remain  there  during  an  hour. 
When  the  unlucky  boy  descended,  he  trembled  like  one 
caught  in  the  fact,  and  on  his  knees  confessed  that  the 
pleasure  he  took  in  watching  the  stars  from  the  steeple 
was  the  real  cause  which  detained  him  from  home.  As 
the  father  was  not  born  to  be  an  astronomer,  he  flogged 
his  son  severely.  The  youth  was  found  weeping  in  the 
streets  by  a  man  of  science,  who,  when  he  discovered  in 
a  boy  of  ten  years  of  age  a  passion  for  contemplating 
the  stars  at  night,  and  one,  too,  who  had  discovered  an 
observatory  in  a  steeple,  decided  that  the  seal  of  Nature 
had  impressed  itself  on  the  genius  of  that  boy.  Reliev- 
ing the  parent  from  the  son,  and  the  son  from  the 
parent,  he  assisted  the  young  La  Caille  in  his  passionate 
pursuit,  and  the  event  completely  justified  the  prediction. 
How  childi'cn  feel  a  predisposition  for  the  studies  of 
astronomy,  or  mechanics,  or  architecture,  or  natural 
history,  is  that  secret  in  nature  we  have  not  guessed. 


76  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

There  may  he  a  virgin  thought  as  well  as  a  virgin  habit 
— nature  before  education — which  first  opens  the  mind, 
and  ever  afterwards  is  shaping  its  tender  folds.  Acci- 
dents may  occur  to  call  it  forth,  but  thousands  of  youths 
have  found  themselves  in  parallel  situations  with  Smea- 
ton,  Ferguson,  and  La  Caille,  without  experiencing  their 
energies. 

The  case  of  Clairon,  the  great  French  tragic  actress, 
who  seems  to  have  been  an  actress  before  she  saw  a 
theatre,  deserves  attention.  This  female,  destined  to  be 
a  sublime  tragedian,  was  of  the  lowest  extraction ;  the 
daughter  of  a  violent  and  illiterate  woman,  who,  with 
blows  and  menaces,  was  driving  about  the  child  all 
day  to  manual  labour.  "I  know  not,"  says  Claii'on, 
"  whence  I  derive  my  disgust,  but  I  could  not  bear  the 
idea  to  be  a  mere  workwoman,  or  to  remain  inactive  in 
a  corner."  In  her  eleventh  year,  being  locked  up  in  a 
room  as  a  punishment,  with  the  windows  fastened,  she 
climbed  upon  a  chair  to  look  about  her.  A  new  object 
instantly  absorbed  her  attention.  In  the  house  opposite 
she  observed  a  celebrated  actress  amidst  her  family ;  her 
daughtei*  was  performing  her  dancing  lesson :  the  girl 
Clairon,  the  future  Melpomene,  was  struck  by  the  influ- 
ence of  this  graceful  and  affectionate  scene.  "All  my 
little  being  collected  itself  into  my  eyes ;  I  lost  not  a 
single  motion ;  as  soon  as  the  lesson  ended,  all  the 
family  applauded,  and  the  mother  embraced  the  daugh- 
ter. The  difference  of  her  fate  and  mine  filled  me  with 
profound  grief;  my  tears  hindered  me  from  seeing  any 
longer,  and  wlien  the  palpitations  of  my  heart  allowed 
me  to  re-ascend  the  chair,  all  had  disappeared."  This 
scene  was  a  discovery  ;  from  that  moment  Clairon  knew 
no  rest,  and  rejoiced  when  she  could  get  her  mother  to 
confine  her  in  that  room.  The  happy  girl  was  a  divinity 
to  the  unhappy  one,  whose  susceptible  genius  imitated 
her  in   every  gesture  and   every  motion;    and  Clairon 


YOUTHFUL   STUDIES.  77 

soon  showed  the  effect  of  her  ardent  studies.  She 
betrayed  in  the  common  intercourse  of  life,  all  the  graces 
she  had  taught  herself;  she  charmed  her  friends,  and 
even  softened  her  barbai'ous  mother;  in  a  word,  the 
enthusiastic  girl  was  an  actress  without  knowing  what 
an  actress  was. 

In  this  case  of  the  youth  of  genius,  are  we  to  conclude 
that  the  accidental  view  of  a  young  actress  practising  her 
studies  imparted  the  character  of  Clairon?  Could  a 
mere  chance  occurrence  have  given  birth  to  those  facul- 
ties which  produced  a  sublime  tragedian?  Li  all  arts 
there  are  talents  which  may  be  acquired  by  imitation 
and  reflection, — and  thus  far  may  genius  be  educated; 
but  there  are  others  which  are  entirely  the  result  of  native 
sensibility,  which  often  secretly  torment  the  possessor, 
and  which  may  even  be  lost  from  the  want  of  develop- 
ment, dissolved  into  a  state  of  languor  from  which  many 
have  not  recovered.  Claii-on,  before  she  saw  the  young 
actress,  and  having  yet  no  concej^tion  of  a  theati'e — ^for 
she  had  never  entered  one — had  in  her  soul  that  latent 
faculty  which  creates  a  dramatic  genius.  "  Had  I  not  felt 
like  Dido,"  she  once  exclaimed,  "  I  could  not  have  thus 
personified  her !" 

The  foi'ce  of  impressions  received  in  the  warm  suscep- 
tibility of  the  childhood  of  genius,  is  probably  little 
known  to  us  ;  but  we  may  perceive  them  also  working 
in  the  moral  character,  which  frequently  discovers  itself 
in  childhood,  and  which  manhood  cannot  always  conceal, 
however  it  may  alter.  The  intellectual  and  the  moral 
character  are  unquestionably  closely  allied.  Erasmus 
acquaints  us,  that  Sir  Thomas  More  had  something  ludi- 
crous in  his  aspect,  tending  to  a  smile, — a  feature  which 
his  portraits  preserve  ;  and  that  he  was  more  inclined  to 
pleasantry  and  jesting,  than  to  the  gravity  of  the  chan- 
cellor. This  circumstance  he  imputes  to  Sir  Thomas 
More  "being  from  a  child  so  delighted  with  humour. 


78  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

that  he  seemed  to  be  even  born  for  it."  And  we  know 
that  he  died  as  he  had  lived,  with  a  jest  on  his  lips.  The 
hero,  who  came  at  length  to  regret  that  he  had  but  one 
world  to  conquer,  betrayed  the  majesty  of  his  restless 
genius  when  but  a  youth.  Had  Aristotle  been  nigh 
when,  solicited  to  join  in  the  course,  the  princely  boy  re- 
plied, that  "  He  would  run  in  no  career  where  kings  were 
not  the  competitors,"  the  prescient  tutor  might  have 
recognized  in  his  pupil  the  future  and  successful  rival  of 
Darius  and  Porus. 

A  narrative  of  the  earliest  years  of  Prince  Henry,  by 
one  of  his  attendants,  forms  an  authentic  collection  of 
juvenile  anecdotes,  which  made  me  feel  very  forcibly 
that  there  are  some  children  who  deserve  to  have  a  biog- 
rapher at  their  side ;  but  anecdotes  of  children  are  the 
rarest  of  biographies,  and  I  deemed  it  a  singular  piece  of 
good  fortune  to  have  recovered  such  a  remarkable  evi- 
dence of  the  precocity  of  character.*  Professor  Dugald 
Stewart  has  noticed  a  fact  in  Arnauld's  infancy,  which, 
considered  in  connexion  with  his  subsequent  life,  affords 
a  good  illustration  of  the  force  of  impressions  received  in 
the  first  dawn  of  reason.  Arnauld,  who,  to  his  eightieth 
year,  passed  through  a  life  of  theological  controversy, 
when  a  child,  amusing  himself  in  the  library  of  the  Cardi- 
nal Du  Perron,  requested  to  have  a  pen  given  to  him. 
"  For  what  purpose  ?"  inquii-ed  the  cardinal.  "  To  write 
books,  like  you,  against  the  Huguenots."  The  cardinal, 
then  aged  and  infirm,  could  not  conceal  his  joy  at  the 
prospect  of  so  hopeful  a  successor ;  and  placing  the  pen 
in  his  hand,  said,  "  I  give  it  you  as  the  dying  shepherd, 
Daraoetas,  bequeathed  his  pipe  to  the  little  Corydon." 
Other  children  might  have  asked  for  a  pen — but  to  write 
against  the  Huguenots  evinced  a  deeper  feeling  and  a 
wider  association  of  ideas,  indicating  the  futui'e  polemic. 

*  I  have  prosorvod  this  mamiscripr   aarrativo  in   "  Curiosities   of 
Literature,"  vol.  ii. 


YOUTHFUL  STUDIES.  79 

Some  of  these  facts,  we  conceive,  afford  decisive  e\i- 
dence  of  that  instinct  in  genius,  that  primary  quality  of 
mind,  sometimes  called  organization,  which  has  inflamed 
a  war  of  words  by  an  equivocal  term.  We  repeat  that 
this  faculty  of  genius  can  exist  independent  of  education, 
and  where  it  is  wanting,  education  can  never  confer  it : 
it  is  an  impulse,  an  instinct  always  working  in  the  char- 
acter of  "  the  chosen  mind  ;" 

One  with  our  feelings  and  our  powers, 
And  rather  part  of  us,  than  ours. 

In  the  history  of  genius  there  are  unquestionably  many 
secondary  causes  of  considerable  influence  in  developing, 
or  even  crushing  the  germ — these  have  been  of  late  often 
detected,  and  sometimes  carried  to  a  ridiculous  extreme ; 
but  among  them  none  seem  more  remarkable  than  the 
first  studies  and  the  first  habits. 


CHAPTER    VI. 


The  first  studies. — The  self-educated  are  marked  by  stubborn  pecu- 
liarities.— Their  errors. — Their  improvement  from  the  neglect  or 
contempt  they  incur. — The  history  of  self-education  in  Moses  Men- 
delssohn.— Friends  usually  prejudicial  in  the  youth  of  genius. — A 
remarkable  interview  between  Petrarch  in  his  first  studies,  and  his 
literary  adviser. — Exhortation. 

THE  first  studies  form  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  genius, 
and  unquestionably  have  sensibly  influenced  its  pro- 
ductions. Often  have  the  first  impressions  stamped  a 
character  on  the  mind  adapted  to  receive  one,  as  the  first 
Btep  into  life  has  often  determined  its  walk.  But  this, 
for   ourselves,  is  a  far  distant  period  in  our  existence, 


80  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

which  is  lost  in  the  horizon  of  our  own  recollections,  and 
is  usually  unobserved  by  othei's. 

Many  of  those  peculiarities  of  men  of  genius  which  are 
not  fortunate,  and  some  which  have  hardened  the  charac- 
ter in  its  mould,  may,  however,  be  traced  to  this  period. 
Physicians  tell  us  that  there  is  a  certain  point  in  youth 
at  which  the  constitution  is  formed,  and  on  which  the 
sanity  of  life  revolves ;  the  character  of  genius  experi- 
ences a  similar  dangerous  period.  Early  bad  tastes,  early 
peculiar  habits,  early  defective  instructions,  all  the  ego- 
tistical pride  of  an  untamed  intelleet,  are  those  evil 
spirits  which  will  dog  genius  to  its  grave.  An  early  at- 
tachment to  the  works  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  produced 
in  Johnson  an  excessive  admiration  of  that  Latinised 
English,  which  violated  the  native  graces  of  the  language ; 
and  the  peculiar  style  of  Gibbon  is  traced  by  himself  "  to 
the  constant  habit  of  speaking  one  language,  and  writing 
another.  The  first  studies  of  Rembrandt  affected  his 
after-labours.  The  peculiarity  of  shadow  which  marks 
all  his  pictures,  originated  in  the  circumstance  of  his 
father's  mill  receiving  light  from  an  aperture  at  the  top, 
which  habituated  the  artist  afterwards  to  view  all  objects 
as  if  seen  in  that  magical  liglit.  The  intellectual  Poussin, 
as  Nicholas  has  been  called,  could  never,  from  an  early 
devotion  to  the  fine  statues  of  antiquity,  extricate  his 
genius  on  the  canvas  from  the  hard  forms  of  marble  ;  he 
Bcul2)tured  Avith  his  pencil ;  and  that  cold  austerity  of 
tone,  still  more  remarkable  in  his  last  pictures,  as  it  be- 
came mannered,  cliills  the  spectator  on  a  first  glance. 
When  Pope  was  a  cliild,  he  found  in  his  mother's  closet  a 
small  library  of  mystical  devotion ;  but  it  was  not  sus- 
pected, till  tlie  fact  was  discovered,  that  the  efliisions  of 
love  and  religion  poured  forth  in  his  "Eloisa"  were 
caught  from  tlie  scrapliic  raptures  of  those  erotic  mystics, 
wlio  to  the  last  retained  a  pUice  in  his  library  among  the 
classical  bai'ds  of  antiquity,     Tlie  accidental  perusal  of 


YOUTHFUL  STUDIES.  81 

Quintus  Curtius  first  made  Boyle,  to  use  his  own  words, 
"  in  love  with  other  than  pedantic  books,  and  conjured 
up  in  him  an  unsatisfied  appetite  of  knowledge  ;  so  that 
he  thought  he  owed  more  to  Quintus  Curtius  than  did 
Alexander,"  From  the  perusal  of  Rycaut's  folio  of  Turk- 
ish history  in  childhood,  the  noble  and  impassioned  bard 
of  our  times  retained  those  indelible  impressions  which 
gave  life  and  motion  to  the  "  Giaour,"  "  the  Corsair," 
and  "Alp."  A  voyage  to  the  country  produced  the 
Bcener}-.  Rycaut  only  communicated  the  impulse  to  a 
mind  susceptible  of  the  poetical  character ;  and  without 
this  Turkish  history  we  should  still  have  had  the  poet.* 

The  influence  of  first  studies  in  the  formation  of  the 
character  of  genius  is  a  moral  phenomenon  which  has  not 
Bufiicioiitly  attracted  our  notice.  Franklin  acquaints  us 
that,  when   young  and  wanting  books,  he  accidentally 

*  Tlie  following  manuscript  note  by  Lord  Byron  on  this  passage, 
cannot  fail  to  interest  the  lovers  of  poetry,  as  well  as  the  inquirers  into 
the  history  of  the  human  mind.  His  lordship's  recollections  of  his  first 
readings  will  not  alter  the  tendency  of  my  conjecture ;  it  only  proves 
that  he  had  read  much  more  of  Eastern  history  and  manners  than  Ry- 
aut's  folio,  which  probably  led  to  this  class  of  books : 

"KnoUes — Cantomir — De  Tott — Lady  M.  W.  Montagu — Hawkins's 
translation  from  Mignot's  History  of  the  Turks — The  Arabian  Nights — 
all  travels  or  histories  or  books  upon  the  East  I  could  meet  with  I  had 
read,  as  well  as  Rycaut,  before  I  was  ten  years  old.  I  think  the  Ara- 
bian Nights  first.  After  these  I  preferred  the  history  of  naval  actions, 
Don  Quixote,  and  Smollett's  novels,  particularly  Roderick  Random, 
and  I  was  passionate  for  the  Roman  history. 

•'  "When  a  boy  I  could  never  bear  to  read  any  poetry  whatever  with- 
out disgust  and  reluctance." — MS.  note  by  D^rd  Byron.  Latterly  Lord 
Byron  acknowledged  in  a  conversation  hold  in  Greece  with  Count 
Gamba,  not  long  before  he  died.  "  The  Turkish  History  was  one  of  the 
first  books  that  gave  me  pleasure  when  a  child;  and  I  beheve  it  had 
much  influence  on  my  subsequent  wishes  to  visit  the  Levant;  and 
gave  perhaps  the  Oriental  colouring  which  is  observed  in  my  poetry." 

I  omitted  the  following  note  in  my  last  edition,  but  I  shall  now  pre- 
serve it,  as  it  may  enter  into  the  history  of  his  lordship's  character: 

"  When  I  was  in  Turkey  I  was  oftener  tempted  to  turn  Mussulman 
than  poet,  and  have    '^en  regretted  since  that  I  did  not     1818." 
6 


82  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

found  De  Foe's  "  Essay  on  Projects,"  from  which  -worls 
impressions  were  derived  which  afterwards  influenced 
some  of  the  principal  events  of  his  life.  The  lectures  of 
Reynolds  probably  originated  in  the  essays  of  Richard- 
son. It  is  acknowledged  that  these  first  made  him  a 
painter,  and  not  long  afterwards  an  author  ;  and  it  is  said 
that  many  of  the  principles  in  his  lectures  may  be  traced 
in  those  first  studies.  Many  were  the  indelible  and  glow- 
ing impressions  caught  by  the  ardent  Reynolds  from 
those  bewildering  pages  of  enthusiasm !  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  according  to  a  family  tradition,  when  a  young 
man,  was  perpetually  reading  and  conversing  on  the  dis- 
coveries of  Columbus,  and  the  conquests  of  Cortez  and 
Pizarro.  His  character,  as  well  as  the  great  events  of 
his  life,  seem  to  have  been  inspired  by  his  favourite  his- 
tories ;  to  pass  beyond  the  discoveries  of  the  Spaniards 
became  a  passion,  and  the  vision  of  his  life.  It  is 
formally  testified  that,  from  a  copy  of  Vegetius  de  Re 
Milltari,  in  the  school  library  of  St.  Paul's,  Marlborough 
imbibed  his  passion  for  a  military  life.  If  he  could  not 
understand  the  text,  the  prints  were,  in  such  a  mind,  suflS- 
cent  to  awaken  the  passion  for  military  glory.  Rousseau 
in  early  youth,  full  of  his  Plutarch,  while  he  was  also 
devouring  the  trash  of  romances,  could  only  conceive 
human  nature  in  the  colossal  forms,  or  be  afiected  by  the 
infirm  sensibility  of  an  imagination  mastering  all  his 
faculties;  tliinking  like  a  Roman,  and  feeling  like  a 
Sybai-ite.  The  same  circumstance  happened  to  Catherine 
Macaulcy,  who  herself  has  told  us  how  she  owed  the  bent 
of  her  character  to  the  early  reading  of  the  Roman 
historians ;  but  combining  Roman  admiration  with  En- 
glish faction,  she  violated  truth  in  English  characters,  and 
exaggerated  romance  in  her  Roman.  But  the  permanent 
effect  of  a  solitary  bias  in  the  youth  of  genius,  impelling 
the  whole  current  of  his  after-life,  is  strikingly  displayed 
in  the  remarkable  character  of  Archdeacon  Blackburne, 


ARCHDEACON  BLACKBURNE.  83 

the  author  of  the  famous  "  Confessional,"  and  the  curious 
"Memoirs  of  Hollis,"  written  with  such  a  republican 
fierceness. 

I  had  long  considered  the  character  of  our  archdeacon 
as  a  lusus  poUtieus  et  theologicus.  Having  subscribed  to 
the  Articles,  and  enjoying  the  archdeaconry,  he  was 
■writing  against  subscription  and  the  whole  hierarchy  with 
a  spirit  so  irascible  and  caustic,  that  one  would  have 
suspected  that,  like  Prynne  and  BastAvick,  the  archdeacon 
had  already  lost  both  his  ears  ;  while  his  antipathy  to 
monarchy  might  have  done  honour  to  a  Roundhead  of 
the  Rota  Club.  The  secret  of  these  volcanic  explosions 
was  only  revealed  in  a  letter  accidentally  preserved.  In 
the  youth  of  our  spirited  archdeacon,  when  fox-hunting 
was  his  deepest  study,  it  happened  at  the  house  of  a 
relation,  that  on  a  rainy  day  he  fell,  among  other  garret 
lumber,  on  some  worm-eaten  volumes  which  had  once 
been  the  careful  collections  of  his  great-grandfather,  an 
Oliverian  justice.  "  These,"  says  he,  "  I  conveyed  to  my 
lodging-room,  and  there  became  acquainted  with  the 
manners  and  principles  of  many  excellent  old  Puritans, 
and  then  laid  the  foundation  of  my  own."  The  enigma 
is  now  solved  !  Archdeacon  Blackburne,  in  his  seclusion 
in  Yorkshire  amidst  the  Oliverian  justice's  library,  shows 
that  we  are  in  want  of  a  Cervantes  but  not  of  a  Quixote, 
and  Yorkshire  might  yet  be  as  renowned  a  country  as 
La  Mancha ;  for  j)olitical  romances,  it  is  presumed,  may 
be  as  fertile  of  ridicule  as  any  of  the  folios  of  chivalry. 

We  may  thus  mark  the  influence  through  life  of  those 
first  unobserved  impressions  on  the  character  of  genius, 
wliich  every  author  has  not  recorded. 

Education,  however  indispensable  in  a  cultivated  age, 
produces  nothing  on  the  side  of  genius.  Where  educa- 
tion ends,  genius  often  begins.  Gray  was  asked  if  he 
recollected  when  lie  first  felt  the  strong  j^redilection  to 
poetry ;    he  replied  that,  "  he  believed  it  was  when  he 


84  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

began  to  read  Virgil  for  his  own  amusement,  and  not  in 
Bchool  hours  as  a  task."  Such  is  the  force  of  self-educa- 
tion in  genius,  that  the  celebrated  physiologist,  John 
Hunter,  who  was  entirely  self-educated,  evinced  such 
penetration  in  his  anatomical  discoveries,  that  he  has 
brought  into  notice  passages  from  writers  he  was  unable 
to  read,  and  which  had  been  overlooked  by  profound 
scholars.* 

That  the  education  of  genius  must  be  its  own  work,  we 
may  appeal  to  every  one  of  the  family.  It  is  not  always 
fortunate,  for  many  die  amidst  a  waste  of  talents  and  the 
wi'eck  of  mind. 

Many  a  soul  sublime 
Has  felt  the  influence  of  malignant  star 

An  unfavourable  position  in  society  is  a  usual  obstruc- 
tion in  the  course  of  this  self-education ;  and  a  man  of 
genius,  throiigh  half  his  life,  has  held  a  contest  with  a 
bad,  or  with  no  education.  There  is  a  race  of  the  late- 
taught,  who,  with  a  capacity  of  leading  in  the  first  rank, 
are  mortified  to  discover  themselves  only  on  a  level  with 
their  contemporaries.  Winckelmann,  who  passed  his  youth 
in  obscure  misery  as  a  village  schoolmaster,  paints  feel- 
ings which  strikingly  contrast  with  his  avocations.  "  I 
formerly  filled  the  ofiice  of  a  schoolmaster  with  the  great- 
est punctuality ;  and  I  taught  the  A,  B,  C,  to  children 
with  filthy  heads,  at  the  moment  I  was  aspiring  after  the 
knowledge  of  the  beautiful,  and  meditating,  low  to  my- 
self, on  the  similes  of  Homer ;  then  I  said  to  myself,  as  I 
still  say,  '  Peace,  my  soul,  thy  strength  shall  surmount 

♦  Life  of  John  Hunter,  by  Dr.  Adams,  p.  69,  where  the  case  is  curi- 
ously illustrated.  [The  writer  therein  defends  Hunter  from  a  charge 
of  plagiarism  from  the  Greek  writers,  who  had  studied  accurately 
certain  phases  of  disease,  which  had  afterwards  been  "  overlooked  by 
the  most  profound  scholars  for  nearly  two  thousand  years,"  until  John 
Hunter  by  his  own  close  observation  had  assumed  similar  conclusions.] 


SELF-EDUCATION.  85 

thy  cares.' "  The  obstructions  of  so  unhappy  a  self-edu- 
cation essentially  injured  his  ardent  genius,  and  long  he 
secretly  sorrowed  at  this  want  of  early  patronage,  and 
these  habits  of  hfe  so  discordant  with  the  habits  of  his 
mind.  "  I  am  unfortunately  one  of  those  whom  the 
Greeks  named  6<J".fia'9si<;,  sero  sapientes,  the  late-learned, 
for  I  have  appeared  too  late  in  the  world  and  in  Italy. 
To  have  done  something,  it  was  necessary  that  I  should 
have  had  an  education  analogous  to  my  pursuits,  and  at 
your  age."  This  class  of  the  late-learned  is  a  useful  dis- 
tinction. It  is  so  with  a  sister-art ;  one  of  the  greatest 
musicians  of  our  country  assures  me  that  the  ear  is  as 
latent  with  many  ;  there  are  the  late-learned  even  in  the 
musical  world.  Budseus  declared  that  he  was  both  "  self- 
taught  and  late-taught." 

The  SELF-EDUCATED  are  marked  by  stubborn  peculiari- 
ties. Often  abounding  with  talent,  but  rarely  with 
talent  in  its  place,  their  native  prodigality  has  to  dread 
a  plethora  of  genius  and  a  delirium  of  wit :  or  else,  hard 
but  irregular  students  rich  in  acquisition,  they  find  how 
their  huddled  knowledge,  like  corn  heaped  in  a  granary, 
for  want  of  ventilation  and  stirring,  perishes  in  its  own 
masses.  Not  having  attended  to  the  process  of  their 
own  minds,  and  little  acquainted  with  that  of  other  men, 
they  cannot  throw  out  their  intractable  knowledge,  nor 
with  sympathy  awaken  by  its  softening  touches  the 
thoughts  of  others.  To  conduct  their  native  impulse, 
which  had  all  along  driven  them,  is  a  secret  not  always 
discovered,  or  else  discovered  late  in  life.  Hence  it  has 
happened  with  some  of  this  race,  that  their  fiirst  work 
has  not  announced  genius,  and  their  last  is  stamped  with 
it.  Some  are  often  judged  by  their  first  work,  and  when 
they  have  surpassed  themselves,  it  is  long  ere  it  is  ac- 
knowledged. They  have  improved  themselves  by  the 
very  neglect  or  even  contempt  which  their  unfortunate 
eflEbrts  were  doomed  to  meet ;  and  when  once  they  have 


86  LITERART   CHARACTER. 

learned  what  is  beautiful,  they  discover  a  living  but  un- 
suspected source  in  their  own  wild  but  unregarded  origi- 
nality. Glorying  in  their  strength  at  the  time  that  they 
are  betraying  their  weakness,  yet  are  they  still  mighty 
in  that  enthusiasm  which  is  only  disciplined  by  its  own 
fierce  habits.  Never  can  the  native  faculty  of  genius 
with  its  creative  warmth  be  crushed  out  of  the  human 
soul ;  it  will  work  itself  out  beneath  the  encumbrance  of 
the  most  uncultivated  minds,  even  amidst  the  deep  per- 
plexed feelings  and  the  tumultuous  thoughts  of  the  most 
visionary  enthusiast,  who  is  often  only  a  man  of  genius 
misplaced.*  We  may  find  a  whole  race  of  these  self- 
taught  among  the  unknown  writers  of  the  old  romances, 
and  the  ancient  ballads  of  European  nations ;  there  sleep 
many  a  Homer  and  Virgil — legitimate  heirs  of  their  ge- 
nius, though  possessors  of  decayed  estates.  Bunyan  is 
the  Spenser  of  the  people.  The  fire  burned  towai'ds 
Heaven,  although  the  altar  was  rude  and  rustic. 

Barry,  the  painter,  has  left  behind  him  works  not  to  be 
turned  over  by  the  connoisseur  by  rote,  nor  the  artist 
who  dares  not  be  just.  That  enthusiast,  with  a  temper 
of  mind  resembling  Rousseau's,  but  with  coarser  feelings, 
was  the  same  creature  of  untamed  imagination  consumed 
by  the  same  passions,  with  the  same  fine  intellect  disor- 
dered, and  the  same  fortitude  of  soul ;  but  he  found  his 
self-taught  pen,  like  his  pencil,  betray  his  genius,  f     A 

■*  "  One  assertion  I  will  venture  to  make,  as  suggested  by  my  owu 
experience,  that  there  exist  folios  on  the  human  understanding  and 
the  nature  of  man  which  would  have  a  far  jiistor  claim  to  their  high 
rank  and  celebrity,  li'  in  the  whole  huge  volume  there  could  be  found 
as  much  fulness  of  heart  and  intellect  as  burst  forth  in  many  a  sim- 
ple page  of  George  Pox  and  Jacob  Behmen." — Mr.  Coleridge's  BiogrU' 
phia  Litkrnria,  i.  HiJ. 

I  Like  Hogarth,  when  he  attempted  to  engrave  his  own  works,  hi8 
originality  of  style  made  thorn  differ  from  the  tamer  and  more  mechan- 
ical labours  of  the  professional  engraver.  They  have  consequently 
less  beauty,  but  greater  vigour. — Kd. 


SELF-EDUCATION.  87 

vehement  enthusiasm  breaks  through  his  ill-composed 
works,  throwing  the  sparks  of  his  bold  conceptions  into 
the  soul  of  the  youth  of  genius.  When,  in  his  charac- 
ter of  professor,  he  delivered  his  lectures  at  the  academy, 
at  every  pause  his  auditors  rose  in  a  tumult,  and  at  every 
close  their  hands  returned  to  him  the  proud  feelings  he 
adored.  This  gifted  but  self-educated  man,  once  listen- 
ing to  the  children  of  genius  whom  he  had  created  about 
him,  exclaimed,  "  Go  it,  go  it,  my  boys !  they  did  so  at 
Athens."  This  self-formed  genius  could  throw  up  his 
native  mud  into  the  very  heaven  of  his  invention ! 

But  even  such  pages  as  those  of  Barry's  are  the  ali- 
ment of  young  genius.  Before  we  can  discern  the 
beautiful,  must  we  not  be  endowed  with  the  susceptibil- 
ity of  love  ?  Must  not  the  disposition  be  formed  before 
even  the  object  appears  ?  I  have  witnessed  the  young 
artist  of  genius  glow  and  start  over  the  reveries  of  the 
uneducated  Barry,  but  pause  and  meditate,  and  inquire 
over  the  mature  elegance  of  Reynolds ;  in  the  one  he 
caught  the  passion  for  beauty,  and  in  the  other  he  dis- 
covered the  beautiful;  with  the  one  he  was  warm  and 
restless,  and  with  the  other  calm  and  satisfied. 

Of  the  difficulties  overcome  in  the  self-education  of 
genius,  we  have  a  remarkable  instance  in  the  character 
of  Moses  Mendelssohn,  on  whom  literary  Germany  has 
bestowed  the  honorable  title  of  "  the  Jewish  Socrates."* 
So  great  apparently  were  the  invincible  obstructions 
which  barred  out  Mendelssohn  from  the  world  of  litera- 
ture  and   philosophy,  that,  in   the   history  of  men   of 

*  I  composed  the  life  of  Mendelssohn  so  far  back  as  in  1798,  in  a 
periodical  publication,  whence  our  late  biographers  have  drawn  their 
notices;  a  juvenile  production,  which  happened  to  excite  the  attention 
of  the  late  Barry,  then  not  personally  known  to  me;  and  he  gave  all 
the  immortalit_v  his  poetical  pencil  could  bestow  on  tliis  man  of  genius, 
by  immediately  placing  in  his  Elysium  of  Genius  Mendelssolm  shaking 
hands  with  Addison,  who  wrote  on  the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion, 
and  near  Locke,  the  English  master  of  Mendelssohn's  mind. 


88  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

genius,  it  is  something  like  taking  in  the  history  of  man 
the  savage  of  Aveyron  from  his  woods — who,  destitute 
of  a  human  language,  should  at  length  create  a  model  of 
eloquence ;  who,  without  the  faculty  of  conceiving  a 
figure,  should  at  length  be  capable  of  adding  to  the 
demonstrations  of  Euclid ;  and  who,  without  a  complex 
idea  and  with  few  sensations,  should  at  length,  in  the 
sublimest  strain  of  metaphysics,  open  to  the  world  a  new 
view  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul ! 

Mendelssohn,  the  son  of  a  poor  rabbin,  in  a  village  in 
Germany,  received  an  education  completely  rabbinical, 
and  its  nature  must  be  comprehended,  or  the  term  of 
education  would  be  misunderstood.  The  Israelites  in 
Poland  and  Germany  live  with  all  the  restrictions  of 
their  ceremonial  law  in  an  i  su'ated  state,  and  are  not 
always  instructed  in  the  language  of  the  country  of  their 
birth.  They  employ  for  their  common  intercourse  a  bar- 
barous or  patois  Hebrew ;  while  the  sole  studies  of  the 
young  rabbins  are  strictly  confined  to  the  Talmud,  of 
which  the  fundamental  principle,  like  the  Sonna  of  the 
Turks,  is  a  pious  rejection  of  every  species  of  profane 
learning.  This  ancient  jealous  spirit,  which  walls  in  the 
understanding  and  the  faith  of  man,  was  to  shut  out  what 
the  imitative  Catholics  afterwards  called  heresy.  It  is, 
then,  these  numerous  folios  of  the  Talmiid  which  the 
true  Hebraic  student  contemplates  through  all  the  sea- 
sons of  life,  as  the  Patuecos  in  their  low  valley  imagine 
their  surrounding  mountains  to  be  the  confines  of  the 
universe. 

Of  such  a  nature  was  the  plan  of  Mendelssohn's  first 
studies ;  but  even  in  his  boyhood  this  conflict  of  study 
occasioned  an  agitation  of  his  spirits,  which  affected  his 
life  ever  after.  Rejecting  the  Talmudical  dreamers,  he 
cavight  a  nobler  spirit  from  the  celebrated  Maimonides  ; 
and  his  native  sagacity  was  already  clearing  up  the  sur- 
rounding darkness.     An  enemy  not  less  hostile  to  the 


1 


MENDELSSOHN.  89 

enlargement  of  mind  than  voluminous  legends,  presented 
itself  in  the  indigence  of  his  father,  who  was  compelled  to 
send  away  the  youth  on  foot  to  Berlin,  to  find  labour 
and  bread." 

At  Berlin,  Mendelssohn  becomes  an  amanuensis  to  an- 
other poor  rabbin,  who  could  only  still  initiate  him  into  the 
theology,  the  jurisprudence,  and  the  scholastic  philosophy 
of  his  peopld  Thus,  he  was  as  yet  no  farther  advanced 
in  that  philoso])hy  of  the  mind  in  which  he  was  one  day 
to  be  the  rival  of  Plato  and  Locke,  nor  in  that  knowl- 
edge of  literature  which  was  finally  to  jplace  him  among 
the  first  polished  critics  of  Germany. 

Some  unexpected  event  occurs  which  gives  the  first 
great  impulse  to  the  mind  of  genius:  Mendelssohn 
received  this  from  the  companion  of  his  misery  and  his 
studies,  a  man  of  congenial  but  maturer  powers.  He 
was  a  Polish  Jew,  expelled  from  the  communion  of  the 
orthodox,  and  the  calumniated  student  was  now  a  va- 
grant, with  more  sensibility  than  fortitude.  But  this 
vagrant  was  a  philosopher,  a  poet,  a  naturalist,  and  a 
mathematician.  Mendelssohn,  at  a  distant  day,  never 
alluded  to  him  without  tears.  Thrown  together  into  the 
same  situation,  they  approached  each  other  by  the  same 
sympathies,  and  communicating  in  the  only  language 
which  Mendelssohn  could  speak,  the  Polander  voluntarily 
undertook  his  literary  education. 

Then  was  seen  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  spectacles 
in  the  history  of  modern  literature.  Two  houseless 
Hebrew  yoiaths  might  be  discovered,  in  the  moonlit 
streets  of  Berlin,  sitting  in  retired  corners,  or  on  the 
steps  of  some  porch,  the  one  instructing  the  other,  with 
a  Euclid  in  his  hand ;  but  what  is  more  extraordinary,  it 
was  a  Hebrew  version,  composed  by  the  master  for  a 
pupil  who  knew  no  other  language.  Who  could  then 
have  imagined  that  the  future  Plato  of  Germany  was 
sitting  on  those  steps  ! 


90  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

The  Polander,  whose  deep  melancholy  had  settled  ou 
his  heart,  died — yet  he  had  not  lived  in  vain,  since  the 
electric  spark  that  lighted  up  the  soul  of  Mendelssohn 
had  fallen  from  his  own. 

'  Mendelssohn  was  now  left  alone  ;  his  mind  teeming  with 
its  chaos,  and  still  master  of  no  other  language  than  that 
barren  idiom  which  was  incapable  of  expressing  the  ideas 
he  was  meditating  on.  He  had  scarcely  made  a  step  into 
the  philosophy  of  his  age,  and  the  genius  of  Mendelssohn 
had  probably  been  lost  to  Germany,  had  not  the  singular- 
ity of  his  studies  and  the  cast  of  his  mind  been  detected 
by  the  sagacity  of  Dr.  Kisch.  The  aid  of  this  physician 
was  momentous  ;  for  he  devoted  several  hours  every  day 
to  the  instruction  of  a  poor  youth,  whose  strong  capacity 
he  had  the  discernment  to  perceive,  and  the  generous 
temper  to  aid.  Mendelssohn  was  soon  enabled  to  read 
Locke  in  a  Latin  version ;  but  with  such  extreme  pain, 
that,  compelled  to  search  for  every  word,  and  to  arrange 
their  Latin  oi'der,  and  at  the  same  time  to  combine  meta- 
physical ideas,  it  was  observed  that  he  did  not  so  much 
translate,  as  guess  by  the  force  of  meditation. 

This  prodigious  effort  of  his  intellect  retarded  his  pro 
gress,  but  invigorated  his  habit,  as  the  racer,  by  running 
against  the  hill,  at  length  courses  with  facility. 

A  succeeding  eifort  was  to  master  the  living  languages, 
and  chiefly  the  English,  that  he  might  read  his  favourite 
Locke  in  his  own  idiom.  Thus  a  great  genius  for  meta- 
physics and  languages  was  forming  itself  alone,  without 
aid. 

It  is  curious  to  detect,  in  tlie  cliaracter  of  genius,  the 
effects  of  local  and  moral  influences.  There  resulted 
from  Mendelssohn's  early  situation  certain  defects  in  his 
Jewish  education,  and  numerous  impediments  in  his 
studies.  Inheriting  but  one  language,  too  obsolete  and 
naked  to  serve  tlie  purposes  of  modern  philosophy,  he 
perhaps   overvalued    his    new   acquisitions,   and   in   his 


CRITICISM   OF  FRIENDS.  91 

delight  of  knowing  many  languages,  he  with  difficulty 
escaped  from,  remaining  a  mere  philologist ;"  while  in  his 
philosophy,  having  adopted  the  prevailing  principles  of 
Wolf  and  Baumgarten,  his  genius  was  long  without  the 
courage  or  the  skill  to  emancipate  itself  from  their  rusty 
chains.  It  was  more  than  a  step  which  had  brought  him 
into  their  circle,  but  a  step  was  yet  wanting  to  escape 
from  it. 

At  length  the  mind  of  Mendelssohn  enlarged  in  liter- 
ary intercourse  :  he  became  a  great  and  original  thinker 
in  many  beautiful  speculations  in  moral  and  critical  phi- 
losophy ;  while  he  had  gradually  been  creating  a  style 
which  the  ei'itics  of  Germany  have  declared  to  be  their 
first  luminous  model  of  precision  and  elegance.  Thus  a 
Hebrew  vagrant,  first  perplexed  in  the  voluminous  laby- 
rinth of  Judaical  learning,  in  his  middle  age  oppressed 
by  indigence  and  malady,  and  in  his  mature  life  wrestling 
with  that  commercial  station  whence  he  derived  his  hum- 
ble independence,  became  one  of  the  master-writers  in 
the  literature  of  his  countrj'-.  The  history  of  the  mind 
of  Mendelssohn  is  one  of  the  noblest  pictures  of  the  self- 
education  of  genius. 

Fiiends,  whose  prudential  counsels  in  the  business  of 
life  are  valuable  in  our  youth,  ax*e  usually  prejudicial  in 
the  youth  of  genius.  The  multitude  of  authors  and 
artists  originates  in  the  ignorant  admiration  of  their 
early  friends  ;  while  the  real  genius  has  often  been  dis- 
concerted and  thrown  into  despair  by  the  false  judgments 
of  his  domestic  cii-cle.  The  productions  of  taste  are 
more  unfortunate  than  those  which  depend  on  a  chain  of 
reasoning,  or  the  detail  of  facts ;  these  are  more  palpable 
to  the  common  judgments  of  men;  but  taste  is  of  such 
rarity,  that  a  long  life  may  be  passed  by  some  without 
once  obtaining  a  familiar  acquaintance  with  a  mind  so 
cultivated  by  knowledge,  so  tried  by  experience,  and  so 
practised  by  converse  wdth  the  literary  world,  that  its 


92  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

prophetic  feeling  can  anticipate  the  public  opinion. 
When  a  young  writer's  first  essay  is  shown,  some, 
through  mere  inabiUty  of  censure,  see  nothing  but  beau- 
ties ;  others,  from  mere  imbecihty,  can  see  none  ;  and 
others,  out  of  pure  malice,  see  nothing  but  faults,  "  I 
was  soon  disgusted,"  says  Gibbon,  "with  the  modest 
practice  of  reading  the  manuscript  to  my  friends.  Of 
such  friends  some  will  praise  for  politeness,  and  some 
will  criticise  for  vanity."  Had  several  of  our  first 
writers  set  their  fortunes  on  the  cast  of  their  friends' 
opinions,  we  might  have  lost  some  precious  compositions. 
The  friends  of  Thomson  discovered  nothing  but  faults 
in  his  early  productions,  one  of  which  happened  to  be  his 
noblest,  the  "  Winter ;"  they  just  could  discern  that  these 
abounded  in  luxuriances,  without  being  aware  that  they 
were  the  luxuriances  of  a  poet.  He  had  created  a  new 
school  in  art — and  appealed  from  his  circle  to  the  public. 
From  a  manuscript  letter  of  our  poet's,  written  when 
employed  on  his  "  Summer,"  I  transcribe  his  sentiments 
on  his  former  literary  friends  in  Scotland — he  is  writing 
to  Mallet :  "  Far  from  defending  these  two  lines,  I  damn 
them  to  the  lowest  depth  of  the  poetical  Tophet,  prepared 
of  old  for  Mitchell,  Morris,  Rook,  Cook,  Beckingham,  and 
a  long  &c.  Wherever  I  have  evidence,  or  think  I  have 
evidence,  which  is  the  same  thing,  I'll  be  as  obstinate  as 
all  the  mules  in  Persia,"  This  poet  of  warm  afi*ections 
felt  so  irritably  the  perverse  criticisms  of  his  learned 
friends,  that  they  were  to  share  alike  a  poetic  Hell — prob- 
ably a  sort  of  Dunciad,  or  lampoons.  One  of  these 
"  blasts  "  broke  out  in  a  vindictive  epigram  on  Mitchell, 
whom  he  describes  with  a  "  blasted  eye ;"  but  this  critic 
literally  having  one,  the  poet,  to  avoid  a  personal  reflec- 
tion, could  only  consent  to  make  the  blemish  more 
active — 

"Why  all  not  faults,  injurious   Mitchell  I  why 
Appears  one  beauty  to  thy  blasting  eye  ? 


CRITICISM   OF  FRIENDS.  93 

He  again  calls  him  "  the  planet-blasted  Mitchell."  Of 
another  of  these  critical  friends  he  speaks  with  more 
sedateness,  but  with  a  strong  conviction  that  the  critic, 
a  very  sensible  man,  had  no  sympathy  with  the  poet. 
"  Aikman's  reflections  on  my  writings  are  very  good, 
but  he  does  not  in  them  regard  the  tui-n  of  my  genius 
enough ;  should  I  alter  my  way,  I  would  write  poorly. 
I  must  choose  what  appears  to  me  the  most  significant 
epithet,  or  I  cannot  with  any  heart  proceed."  The 
"  JVIirror,"  *  when  periodically  published  in  Edinburgh, 
was  "  fastidiously  "  received,  as  all  "  home-productions  " 
are:  but  London  avenged  the  cause  of  the  author. 
When  Swift  introduced  Parnell  to  Lord  Bolingbroke, 
and  to  the  world,  he  observes,  in  his  Journal,  "it  is 
pleasant  to  see  one  who  hardly  passed  for  anything  in 
Ireland,  make  his  way  here  with  a  little  friendly  forward- 
ing." Montaigne  has  honestly  told  us  that  in  his  own 
province  they  considered  that  for  him  to  attempt  to 
become  an  author  was  perfectly  ludicrous ;  at  home,  says 
he,  "  I  am  compelled  to  purchase  printers ;  while  at  a 
distance,  printers  purchase  me."  There  is  nothing  more 
trying  to  the  judgment  of  the  friends  of  a  young  man 
of  genius  than  the  invention  of  a  new  manner :  without 
a  standard  to  appeal  to,  without  bladders  to  swim,  the 
ordinary  critic  sinks  into  irretrievable  distress;  but 
usually  pronounces  against  novelty.  When  Reynolds 
returned  from  Italy,  wai-m  with  all  the  excellence  of  his 
art,  and  painted  a  portrait,  his  old  master,  Hudson,  view- 
ing it,  and  perceiving  no  trace  of  his  own  manner,  ex- 
claimed that  he  did  not  paint  so  well  as  when  he  left 
England  ;  while  another,  who  conceived  no  higher  excel- 

*  This  weekly  journal  was  chiefly  supported  by  the  abilities  of  the 
rising  young  men  of  the  Scottish  Bar.  Henry  Mackenzie,  the  author 
of  the  ''Man  of  Feeling,"  was  th9  principal  contributor.  The  pub- 
lication was  commenced  in  January,  1779,  and  concluded  May, 
1790.— Ed. 


94  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

"ience   tlian   Kneller,  treated  with   signal   contempt   the 
future  Raphael  of  England. 

If  it  be  dangerous  for  a  young  writer  to  i-esign  himself 
to  the  opinions  of  his  friends,  he  also  incurs  some  peril 
in  passing  them  with  inattention.  lie  wants  a  Quintilian. 
One  mode  to  obtain  such  an  invaluable  critic  is  the  culti- 
vation of  his  own  judgment  in  a  round  of  reading  and 
meditation.  Let  him  at  once  supply  the  marble  and  be 
himself  the  sculptor :  let  the  great  authors  of  the  world 
be  his  gospels,  and  the  best  critics  their  expounders ; 
from  the  one  he  will  draw  inspiration,  and  from  the  others 
he  will  supply  those  tardy  discoveries  in  art  which  he 
who  solely  depends  on  his  own  experience  may  obtain  too 
late.  Those  who  do  not  read  criticism  will  rarely  merit 
to  be  criticised ;  their  f)rogress  is  like  those  who  travel 
without  a  map  of  the  country.  The  more  extensive  an 
author's  knowledge  of  what  has  been  done,  the  greater 
will  be  his  powers  in  knowing  what  to  do.  To  obtain 
originality,  and  effect  discovery  sometimes  requires  but  a 
single  step,  if  we  only  know  from  what  point  to  set  for- 
wards. This  important  event  in  the  life  of  genius  has 
too  often  depended  on  chance  and  good  fortune,  and 
many  have  gone  down  to  their  graves  without  having 
discovered  their  unsuspected  talent.  Curran's  predomi- 
nant faculty  was  an  exuberance  of  imagination  when 
excited  by  passion ;  but  when  young  he  gave  no  evidence 
of  this  peculiar  faculty,  nor  for  several  years,  while  a 
candidate  for  public  distinction,  was  he  aware  of  his  par- 
ticular powers,  so  slowly  his  imagination  had  developed 
-  itself.  It  was  when  assured  of  the  secret  of  his  strength 
that  his  confidence,  his  ambition,  and  his  industry  were 
excited. 

Let  the  youth  preserve  his  juvenile  compositions,  what 
ever  these  may  be;  they  arc  the  spontaneous  growth,  and 
like  the  plants  of  the  Alps,  not  always  found  in  other 
soils;  they    are  his  virgin  fancies.      By  contemplating 


JUVENILE   WORKa  95 

them,  he  may  detect  some  of  his  predominant  habits,  re- 
sum^  a  fonner  manner  more  happily,  invent  novelty 
from  an  old  subject  he  had  rudely  dcsii^ned,  and  often 
may  steal  from  himself  some  inventive  touches,  which, 
thrown  into  his  most  finished  compositions,  may  seem,  a 
happiness  rather  than  an  art.  It  was  in  contemplating 
0:1  some  of  their  earliest  and  unfinished  productions,  that 
more  than  one  artist  discovered  with  West  that  "  there 
were  inventive  touches  of  art  in  his  first  and  juvenile 
essay,  which,  with  all  his  subsequent  knowledge  and  ex- 
perience, he  has  not  been  able  to  surpass."  A  young 
writer,  in  the  progress  of  his  studies,  should  often  recol- 
lect a  fanciful  simile  of  Dryden — 

As  those  who  unripe  veins  in  mines  explore 
On  the  rich  bed  again  the  warm  turf  lay, 

Till  time  digests  the  yet  imperfect  ore  ; 
And  know  it  will  be  gold  another  day. 

The  youth  of  genius  is  that  "  age  of  admiration"  as 
sings  the  poet  of  "  Human  Life,"  when  the  spell  breathed 
into  our  ear  by  our  genius,  fortunate  or  unfortunate,  is — 
"Aspire!"  Then  we  adore  art  and  the  artists.  It  was 
Richardson's  enthusiasm  which  gave  Reynolds  the  rap- 
tures he  caught  in  meditating  on  the  description  of  a 
great  painter ;  and  Reynolds  thought  Raphael  the  most 
extraordinary  man  the  world  had  ever  produced.  West, 
when  a  youth,  exclaimed  that  "  A  painter  is  a  com- 
panion for  kings  and  emperors  !"  This  was  the  feeling 
which  rendered  the  thoughts  of  obscurity  painful  and  in- 
supportable to  their  young  minds. 

But  this  sunshine  of  rapture  is  not  always  spread  over 
the  spring  of  the  youthful  year.  There  is  a  season  of 
self-contest,  a  period  of  tremors,  and  doubts,  and  dark- 
ness. These  frequent  returns  of  melancholy,  sometimes 
of  despondence,  which  is  the  lot  of  inexperienced  genius, 
is  a  secret  history  of  the  heart,  which  has  been  finely 


96  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

conveyed  to  us  by  Petrarch,  in  a  conversation  with  John 
of  Florence,  to  whom  the  young  poet  often  resorted 
when  dejected,  to  reanimate  his  failing  powers,  to  con- 
fess his  faults,  and  to  confide  to  him  his  dark  and  waver- 
ing resolves.  It  was  a  question  with  Petrarch,  whether 
he  should  not  turn  away  from  the  pursuit  of  literary 
fame,  by  giving  another  direction  to  his  life. 

"  I  went  one  day  to  John  of  Florence  in  one  of  those 
ague-fits  of  faint-heartedness  which  often  happened  to 
me;  he  received  me  with  his  accustomed  kindness. 
'  What  ails  you  ?'  said  he,  '  you  seem  oppressed  with 
thought :  if  I  am  not  deceived,  something  has  happened 
to  you.'  '  You  do  not  deceive  yourself,  my  father  (for 
thus  I  used  to  call  him),  and  yet  nothing  newly  has  hap- 
pened to  me ;  but  I  come  to  confide  to  you  that  my  old 
melancholy  torments  me  more  than  usual.  You  know 
its  nature,  for  my  heart  has  always  been  opened  to  you; 
you  know  all  which  I  have  done  to  draw  myself  out  of 
the  crowd,  and  to  acquire  a  name ;  and  surely  not  with- 
out some  success,  since  I  have  your  testimony  in  my 
favour.  Are  you  not  the  truest  man,  and  the  best  of 
critics,  who  have  never  ceased  to  bestow  on  me  your 
praise — and  what  need  I  more  ?  Have  you  not  often 
told  me  that  I  am  answerable  to  God  for  the  talents  he 
has  endowed  me  with,  if  I  neglected  to  cultivate  them  ? 
Your  praises  were  to  me  as  a  sharp  spur :  I  applied  my- 
self to  study  with  more  ardour,  insatiable  even  of  my 
moments.  Disdaining  the  beaten  paths,  I  opened  a  new 
road ;  and  I  flattered  myself  that  assiduous  labour  would 
lead  to  something  great ;  but  I  know  not  how,  when  I 
thought  myself  highest,  I  feel  myself  fallen ;  the  spring 
of  my  mind  has  dried  up  ;  what  seemed  easy  once,  now 
appears  to  me  above  my  sti-ength;  I  stumble  at  every 
Btep,  and  am  ready  to  sink  for  ever  into  despair.  I  re- 
,turn  to  you  to  teach  me,  or  at  least  advise  me.  Shall  I 
for  ever  quit  my  studies?     Shall  I  strike  into  some  new 


PETRARCH'S   LITERARY   ADVISER.  97 

course  of  life  ?  My  father,  have  pity  ou  me  !  draw  me 
out  of  the  frightful  state  in  which  I  am  lost.'  I  could 
proceed  no  farther  without  shedding  tears.  '  Cease  to 
afflict  yourself,  my  son,'  said  that  good  man  ;  '  your  con- 
dition is  not  so  bad  as  you  think :  the  truth  is,  you  knew 
little  at  the  time  you  imagined  you  knew  much.  The 
discovery  of  your  ignorance  is  the  first  great  step  you 
have  made  towards  true  knowledge.  The  veil  is  lifted 
up,  and  you  now  view  those  deep  shades  of  the  soul 
which  were  concealed  from  you  by  excessive  presump- 
tion. In  ascending  an  elevated  spot,  we  gradually  dis- 
cover many  things  whose  existence  before  was  not  sus- 
pected by  us.  Persevere  in  the  career  which  you  entered 
with  my  advice ;  feel  confident  that  God  will  not  aban- 
don you :  there  are  maladies  which  the  patient  does  not 
perceive ;  but  to  be  aware  of  the  disease,  is  the  first  step 
towards  the  cure.' " 

This  remarkable  literary  interview  is  here  given,  that 
it  may  perchance  meet  the  eye  of  some  kindred  youth 
at  one  of  those  lonely  moments  when  a  Shakspeare  may 
have  thought  himself  no  poet,  and  a  Raphael  believed 
himself  no  painter.  Then  may  the  tender  wisdom  of  a 
John  of  Florence,  in  the  cloudy  despondency  of  art, 
lighten  up  the  vision  of  its  glory  ! 

Ingenuous  Youth  !  if  in  a  constant  perusal  of  the 
master-writers,  you  see  your  OAvn  sentiments  anticipated 
— if,  in  the  tumult  of  your  mind,  as  it  comes  in  contact 
with  theirs,  new  sentiments  arise — if,  sometimes,  looking 
on  the  public  favourite  of  the  hour,  you  feel  that  within 
which  prompts  you  to  imagine  that  you  could  rival  or 
surpass  him — if,  in  meditating  on  the  confessions  of 
every  man  of  genius,  for  they  all  have  their  confessions, 
you  find  you  have  experienced  the  same  sensations  from 
the  same  circumstances,  encountered  the  same  difiiculties 
and  overcome  them  by  the  same  means;  then  let  not 
your  courage  be  lost  in  your  admiration,  but  listen  to 

7 


98  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

that  "  still  small  voice "  in  your  heart  which  cries  with 
Correggio  and  with  Montesquieu,  "Ed  io  anche  son 
pittore !" 


CHAPTER    VII. 


Of  the  irritability  of  genius. — Genius  in  society  often  in  a  state  of 
suffering. — Equality  of  temper  more  prevalent  among  men  of  letters. 
— Of  the  occupation  of  making  a  great  name. — Anxieties  of  the 
most  successful. — Of  the  inventors. — Writers  of  learning. — Writers 
of  taste. — Artists. 

THE  modes  of  life  oi  a  man  of  genius,  often  tinctured 
by  eccentricity  and  enthusiasm,  maintain  an  eternal 
conflict  with  the  monotonous  and  imitative  habits  of 
society,  as  society  is  carried  on  in  a  great  metropolis, 
where  men  are  necessarily  alike,  and  where,  in  perpetual 
intei'course,  they  shape  themselves  to  one  another. 

The  occupations,  the  amusements,  and  the  ardour  of 
the  man  of  genius  are  at  discord  with  the  artificial 
habits  of  life ;  in  the  vortexes  of  business,  or  the  world 
of  pleasure,  crowds  of  human  beings  are  only  treading 
in  one  another's  steps.  The  pleasures  and  the  sorrows 
of  this  active  multitude  are  not  his,  while  his  are  not 
obvious  to  them;  and  his  favourite  occupations  strength- 
en his  peculiarities,  and  increase  his  sensibility.  Genius 
in  society  is  often  in  a  state  of  suflering.  Professional 
characters,  who  are  themselves  so  often  literary,  yield- 
ing to  their  predominant  interests,  conform  to  that 
assumed  urbanity  which  levels  them  with  ordinary 
minds;  but  the  man  of  genius  cannot  leave  himself 
behind  in  the  cabinet  he  quits ;  the  train  of  his  thoughts 
is  not  stopped  at  will,  and  in  the  range  of  conversa- 
tion the  habits  of  his  mind  will  prevail :  the  poet 
will  sometimes  muse  till  he  modulates  a  verse ;  the 
artist   is   sketching   what    a    moment    presents,  and    a 


IRRITABILITY   OF   GENIUS.  99 

moment  changes ;  the  philosophical  historian  is  suddenly 
absorbed  by  a  new  combination  of  thought,  and,  placing 
his  hands  over  his  eyes,  is  thrown  back  into  the  Middle 
Ages.  Thus  it  happens  that  an  excited  imagination,  a 
high-toned  feeling,  a  wandering  reverie,  a  restlessness 
of  temper,  are  perpetually  carrying  the  man  of  genius 
out  of  the  processional  line  of  the  mere  conversationists. 
Like  all  solitary  beings,  he  is  much  too  sentient,  and  pre- 
pares for  defence  even  at  a  random  touch  or  a  chance  hit. 
His  generalising  views  take  things  only  in  masses,  while 
in  his  rapid  emotions  he  interrogates,  and  doubts,  and 
is  caustic ;  in  a  word,  he  thinks  he  converses  while  he  is 
at  his  studies.  Sometimes,  apparently  a  complacent 
listener,  we  are  mortified  by  detecting  the  absent  man  : 
now  he  appears  humbled  and  spiritless,  ruminating  over 
some  failure  which  probably  may  be  only  known  to 
himself;  and  now  haughty  and  hardy  for  a  triumph  he 
has  obtained,  which  yet  remains  a  secret  to  the  world. 
No  man  is  so  apt  to  indulge  the  extremes  of  the  most 
opposite  feelings :  he  is  sometimes  insolent,  and  some- 
times querulous ;  now  the  soul  of  tenderness  and  tran- 
quillity,— then  stung  by  jealousy,  or  writhing  in  aver- 
sion !  A  fever  shakes  his  spirit ;  a  fever  which  has 
sometimes  generated  a  disease,  and  has  even  produced  a 
slight  perturbation  of  the  faculties.*     In  one  of  those 

*  I  have  given  a  history  of  literary  quarrels  from  personal  motives, 
in  "  Quarrels  of  Authors,"  p.  529.  There  we  find  how  many  contro- 
versies, in  which  the  public  get  involved,  have  sprung  from  some  sud- 
den squabbles,  some  neglect  of  petty  civility,  some  unlucky  epithet,  or 
son:e  casual  observation  dropped  without  much  consideration,  which 
mortified  or  enraged  the  genus  irritahile ;  a  title  which  from  ancient 
days  has  been  assigned  to  every  description  of  authors.  The  late  Dr. 
Wells,  who  had  some  experience  in  his  intercourse  with  many  literary 
characters,  observed,  that  "in  whatever  regards  the  fruits  of  their 
mental  labours,  this  is  universally  acknowledged  to  bo  true.  Some 
of  the  malevolent  passions  indeed  frequently  become  in  learned  men 
more  than  ordinarily  strong,  from  want  of  that  restraint  upon  their  ex- 
citement which  society  imposes."     A  puerile  critic  has  reproached  rao 


100  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

manuscript  notes  by  Lord  Byron  on  this  work,  which  I 
have  wished  to  preserve,  I  find  his  lordship  observing  on 
the  feelings  of  genius,  that  "  the  depreciation  of  the 
lowest  of  mankind  is  more  painful  than  the  applause  of 
the  highest  is  pleasing."  Such  is  the  confession  of 
genius,  and  such  its  liability  to  hourly  pain. 

Once  we  were  nearly  receiving  from  the  hand  of  genius 
the  most  curious  sketches  of  the  temper,  the  irascible  hu- 
mours, the  delicacy  of  soul,  even  to  its  shadowiness,  from 
the  warm  shozzos  of  Burns,  when  he  began  a  diary  of  the 
heart, — a  narrative  of  characters  and  events,  and  a  chro- 
nology of  his  emotions.  It  was  natural  for  such  a  crea- 
ture of  sensation  and  passion  to  project  such  a  regular 
task,  but  quite  impossible  for  him  to  get  through  it.  The 
paper-book  that  he  conceived  would  have  recorded  all 
these  things  turns  out,  therefore,  but  a  very  imperfect 
document.  Imperfect  as  it  was,  it  has  been  thought 
proper  not  to  give  it  entire.  Yet  there  we  view  a  warm 
original  mind,  when  he  first  stepped  into  the  polished  circles 
of  society,  discovering  that  he  could  no  longer  "  pour  out 
his  bosom,  his  every  thought  and  floating  fancy,  his  very 
inmost  soul,  with  unreserved  confidence  to  another,  with- 
out hazard  of  losing  part  of  that  respect  which  man  de- 
serves from  man ;  or,  from  the  unavoidable  imperfections 
attending  human  nature,  of  one  day  repenting  his  confi- 
dence." This  was  the  first  lesson  he  learned  at  Edinburgh, 
and  it  was  as  a  substitute  for  such  a  human  being  that  he 
bought  a  paper-book  to  keep  under  lock  and  key :  "  a 
security  at  least  equal,"  says  he,  "  to  the  bosom  of  any 
friend  whatever."  Let  the  man  of  genius  pause  over  the 
fragments  of  this  "  paper-book ;" — ^it  will  instruct  as  much 
as  any  open  confession  of  a  criminal  at  the  moment  he  is 
about  to  sufter.     No  man  was  more  afflicted  with  that 

for  having  drawn  my  description  entirely  from  my  own  fancy : — I 
have  taken  it  from  life  I  See  further  symptoms  of  this  disease  at  the 
close  of  the  chapter  on  Self-praise  in  the  present  work. 


BURN'S   DIARY.  101 

miserable  pride,  the  infirmity  of  men  of  imagination, 
which  is  so  jealously  alive,  even  among  their  best  friends, 
as  to  exact  a  perpetual  acknowledgment  of  their  powers. 
Our  poet,  witli  all  his  gratitude  and  veneration  for  "  the 
noble  Glencairn,"  was  "  wounded  to  the  soul "  because 
his  lordship  showed  "  so  much  attention,  engrossing  atten- 
tion, to  the  only  blockhead  at  table ;  the  whole  company 
consisted  of  his  lordship,  Dunderpate,  and  myself" 
This  Dunderpate,  who  dined  with  Lord  Glencairn,  might 
have  been  a  useful  citizen,  who  in  some  points  is  of  more 
value  than  an  irritable  bard.  Burns  was  equally  oifended 
with  another  patron,  who  was  also  a  literary  brother, 
Dr.  Blair.  At  the  moment,  he  too  appeared  to  be  neg- 
lecting the  irritable  poet  "  for  the  mere  carcass  of  great- 
ness, or  when  his  eye  measured  the  difference  of  their 
point  of  elevation ;  I  say  to  myself,  with  scarcely  any 
emotion,"  (he  might  have  added,  except  a  good  deal  of 
painful  contempt,)  "  what  do  I  care  for  him  or  his  pomp 
either  ?" — "  Dr,  Blair's  vanity  is  proverbially  known 
among  his  acquaintances,"  adds  Burns,  at  the  moment 
that  the  solitary  haughtiness  of  his  own  genius  had  en- 
tirely escaped  his  self-observation. 

This  character  of  genius  is  not  singular,  Grimm  tells 
of  Marivaux,  that  though  a  good  man,  there  was  some- 
thing dark  and  suspicious  in  his  character,  which  made 
it  difficult  to  keep  on  terms  with  him ;  the  most  innocent 
word  would  wound  him,  and  he  was  always  inclined  to 
think  that  there  was  an  intention  to  mortify  him ;  this 
disposition  made  him  unhappy,  and  rendered  his  ac- 
quaintance too  painful  to  endure. 

AVhat  a  moral  paradox,  but  what  an  unquestionable 
fact,  is  the  wayward  irritability  of  some  of  the  finest 
geniuses,  which  is  often  weak  to  effeminacy,  and  capri- 
cious to  childishness  !  while  minds  of  a  less  delicate  tex- 
ture are  not  fi-ayed  and  fretted  by  casual  frictions ;  and 
plain  sense  with  a   coarser  grain,  is  sufficient  to  keep 


102  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

down  these  aberrations  of  their  feelings.     How  mortify- 
ing is  the  list  of — 

Fears  of  the  brave  and  follies  of  the  wise  I 

Many  have  been  sore  and  implacable  on  an  illusion  to 
some  personal  defect — on  the  obscurity  of  their  birth — on 
some  peculiarity  of  habit ;  and  have  suifered  themselves 
to  be  governed  in  life  by  nervous  whims  and  chimeras, 
equally  fantastic  and  trivial.  This  morbid  sensibility 
lurks  in  the  temperament  of  genius,  and  the  infection  is 
often  discovered  where  it  is  not  always  suspected. 
Cumberland  declared  that  the  sensibility  of  some  men 
of  genius  is  so  quick  and  captious,  that  you  must  first 
consider  whom  they  can  be  happy  with,  before  you  can 
promise  yourself  any  happiness  with  them  :  if  you  bring 
uncongenial  humours  into  contact  with  each  other,  all 
the  objects  of  society  will  be  frustrated  by  inattention  to 
the  proper  grouping  of  the  guests.  Look  round  on  our 
contemporaries ;  every  day  furnishes  facts  which  confirm 
our  principle.  Among  the  vexations  of  Pope  was  the 
libel  of  "  the  pictured  shape  ;"*  and  even  the  robust  mind 
of  Johnson  could  not  sufier  to  be  exhibited  as  "  blinking 
Sam."f  Milton  must  have  delighted  in  contemplating 
his  own  person ;  and  the  engraver  not  having  reached 
our  sublime  bard's  ideal  grace,  he  has  pointed  his  indig- 
nation in  four  iambics.  The  praise  of  a  skipping  ape 
raised  the  feeling  of  envy  in  that  child  of  nature  and 
genius.  Goldsmith.     Voiture,  the  son  of  a  vintner,  like 

*  He  was  represented  as  an  ill-made  monkey  in  the  frontispiece  to 
a  satire  noted  in  "Quarrels  of  Authors,"  p.  286  (last  edition). — Ed. 

f  Johnson  was  displeased  at  the  portrait  Reynolds  painted  of  him 
wiiich  dwelt  on  his  near-sightedness  ;  declaring  that  "  a  man's  defects 
should  never  be  painted."  Tlie  same  defect  was  made  the  subject  of 
a  caricature  particularly  allusive  to  critical  prejudice.^  in  his  "  Lives  of 
the  Poets,"  in  which  he  is  pictured  as  an  owl  "  bUnking  at  the  stars." 
— Ed. 


SENSITIVENESS  OF   GENIUS.  103 

our  Prior,  was  so  mortified  whenever  reminded  of  his 
origihal  occupation,  that  it  was  bitterly  said,  that  wine, 
which  cheered  the  hearts  of  all  men,  sickened  the  heart 
of  Voiture.  Akenside  ever  considered  his  lameness  as  an 
unsupportable  misfortune,  for  it  continually  reminded 
him  of  the  fall  of  the  cleaver  from  one  of  his  father's 
blocks.  Beccaria,  invited  to  Paris  by  the  literati,  ar- 
rived melancholy  and  silent,  and  abruptly  returned  home. 
At  that  moment  this  great  man  was  most  miserable  from 
a  fit  of  jealousy :  a  young  female  had  extinguished  all 
his  philosophy.  The  poet  Rousseau  was  the  son  of  a 
cobbler ;  and  when  his  honest  parent  waited  at  the  door  of 
the  theatre  to  embrace  his  son  on  the  success  of  his  first 
piece,  genius,  whose  sensibility  is  not  always  virtuous, 
repulsed  the  venerable  father  with  insult  and  contempt. 
But  I  will  no  longer  proceed  from  folly  to  crime. 

Those  who  give  so  many  sensations  to  others  must 
themselves  possess  an  excess  and  a  variety  of  feelings. 
We  find,  indeed,  that  they  are  censured  for  their  extreme 
Irritability ;  and  that  happy  equality  of  temper  so  preva- 
lent among  men  of  letters,  and  which  is  conveniently 
acquired  by  men  of  the  world,  has  been  usually  refused  to 
great  mental  powers,  or  to  fervid  dispositions — authors 
and  artists.  The  man  of  wit  becomes  petulant,  the  pro- 
found thinker  morose,  and  the  vivacious  ridiculously 
thoughtless. 

When  Rousseau  once  retired  to  a  village,  he  had  to 
learn  to  endure  its  conversation  ;  for  this  purpose  he  was 
compelled  to  invent  an  expedient  to  get  rid  of  his  uneasy 
sensations.  "  Alone,  I  have  never  known  ennui,  even 
when  perfectly  unoccupied :  my  imagination,  filling  the 
void,  was  sufiicient  to  busy  me.  It  is  only  the  inactive 
chit-chat  of  the  room,  when  every  one  is  seated  face  to 
face,  and  only  moving  their  tongues,  which  I  never  could 
support.  There  to  be  a  fixtui'e,  nailed  with  one  hand  on 
the  other,  to  settle  the  state  of  the  weather,  or  watch  the 


104  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

flies  about  one,  or,  what  is  worse,  to  be  bandying  compli- 
ments, this  to  me  is  not  bearable."  He  hit  on  the  expe- 
dient of  making  lace-strings,  carrying  his  working  cush- 
ion in  his  visits,  to  keep  the  peace  with  the  country 
gossips. 

Is  the  occupation  of  making  a  great  name  less  anxious 
and  precarious  than  that  of  making  a  great  fortune  ?  the 
progress  of  a  man's  capital  is  unequivocal  to  him,  "but 
that  of  the  fame  of  authors  and  artists  is  for  the  greater 
part  of  their  lives  of  an  ambiguous  nature.  They  become 
whatever  the  minds  or  knowledge  of  others  make  them ; 
they  are  the  creatures  of  the  prejudices  and  the  predispo- 
sitions of  others,  and  must  suffer  from  those  precipitate 
judgments  which  are  the  result  of  such  prejudices  and 
such  predispositions.  Time  only  is  the  certain  friend  of 
literary  worth,  for  time  makes  the  world  disagree  among 
themselves ;  and  when  those  who  condemn  discover  that 
there  are  others  who  approve,  the  weaker  party  loses 
itself  in  the  stronger,  and  at  length  they  learn  that  the 
author  was  far  more  reasonable  than  their  prejudices  had 
allowed  them  to  conceive.  It  is  thus,  however,  that  the 
regard  which  men  of  genius  find  in  one  place  they  lose  in 
another.  We  may  often  smile  at  the  local  gradations  of 
genius ;  the  fervid  esteem  in  which  an  author  is  held 
here,  and  the  cold  indifference,  if  not  contempt,  he  en- 
counters in  another  place ;  here  the  man  of  learning  is 
condemned  as  a  heavy  drone,  and  there  the  man  of  wit 
annoys  the  unwitty  listener. 

And  are  not  the  anxieties  of  even  the  most  successful 
men  of  genius  renewed  at  every  work — often  quitted  in 
despair,  often  returned  to  with  rapture  ?  the  same  agita- 
tion of  the  spirits,  the  same  poignant  delight,  the  same 
weariness,  the  same  dissatisfaction,  the  same  querulous 
languishraent  after  excellence  ?  Is  the  man  of  genius  an 
iNVENTOK  ?  the  discovery  is  contested,  or  it  is  not  com- 
prehended for  ten  years  after,  perhaps  not  during  his 


CONTEMPORARY   CRITICISM.  105 

whole  life ;  even  men  of  science  are  as  children  before 
him.  Sir  Thomas  Bodley  wrote  to  Lord  Bacon,  remon- 
strating Avith  him  on  his  neio  mode  of  philosophising. 
It  seems  the  fate  of  all  originality  of  thinking  to  be  im- 
mediately opposed ;  a  contemporary  is  not  prepared  for 
its  comprehension,  and  too  often  cautiously  avoids  it, 
from  the  prudential  motive  which  turns  away  from  a  new 
and  solitary  path.  Bacon  was  not  at  all  understood  at 
home  in  his  own  day ;  his  reputation — for  it  was  not  ce- 
lebrity— Avas  confined  to  his  history  of  Henry  VII.,  and 
his  Essays ;  it  was  long  after  his  death  before  English 
writers  ventured  to  quote  Bacon  as  an  authority;  and 
with  equal  simplicity  and  grandeur,  Bacon  called  himself 
"  the  servant  of  posterity,"  Montesquieu  gave  his  Esprit 
des  Loix  to  be  read  by  that  man  in  France,  whom  he 
conceived  to  be  the  best  judge,  and  in  return  received 
the  most  mortifying  remarks.  The  great  philosopher  ex- 
claimed in  despair,  "  I  see  my  own  age  is  not  ripe  enough 
to  understand  my  work;  howcA^er  it  shall  be  published!" 
When  Kepler  published  the  first  rational  work  on  comets, 
it  was  condemned,  CA-en  by  the  learned,  as  a  Avdld  dream. 
Copernicus  so  much  dreaded  the  prejudice  of  mankind 
against  his  treatise  on  "  The  Revolutions  of  the  HeaAxn- 
ly  Bodies,"  that  by  a  species  of  continence  of  all  others 
most  difiicult  to  a  philosopher,  says  Adam  Smith,  he  de- 
tained it  in  his  closet  for  thirty  years  together.  Linnaeus 
once  in  despair  abandoned  his  beloved  studies,  from  a 
too  irritable  feeling  of  the  ridicule  in  which,  as  it  ap- 
peared to  him,  a  professor  Siegesbeck  had  involved  his 
famous  system.  Penury,  neglect,  and  labour  Linnaeus 
could  endure,  but  that  his  botany  should  become  the  ob- 
ject of  ridicule  for  all  Stockholm,  shook  the  nerves  of 
this  great  inA^entor  in  his  science.  Let  him  speak  for 
himself,  "  No  one  cared  how  many  sleepless  nights  and 
toilsome  hours  I  had  passed,  while  all  Avith  one  voice  de- 
clared, that  Siegesbeck  had  annihilated  me.     I  took  my 


106  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

leave  of  Flora,  who  bestows  on  me  nothing  but  Sieges- 
becks  ;  and  condemned  my  too  numerous  observations  a 
thousand  times  over  to  eternal  oblivion.  Wliat  a  fool 
have  I  been  to  waste  so  much  time,  to  spend  my  days  iu 
a  study  which  yields  no  better  fruit,  and  makes  me  the 
laughing-stock  of  the  world."  Such  are  the  cries  of  the 
irritability  of  genius,  and  such  are  often  the  causes.  The 
world  was  in  danger  of  losing  a  new  science,  had  not 
Linnjeus  returned  to  the  discoveries  which  he  had  forsa- 
ken in  the  madness  of  the  mind  !  The  gi-eat  Sydenham, 
who,  like  our  Harvey  and  our  Hunter,  effected  a  revolu- 
tion in  the  science  of  medicine,  and  led  on  alone  by  the 
independence  of  his  genius,  attacked  the  most  prevailing 
prejudices,  so  highly  provoked  the  malignant  emulation 
of  his  rivals,  that  a  conspiracy  was  raised  against  the 
father  of  our  modern  practice  to  banish  him  out  of  the 
college,  as  "  guilty  of  medical  heresy."  John  Hunter  was 
a  great  discoverer  in  his  own  science ;  but  one  who  well 
knew  him  has  told  us,  that  few  of  his  contemporaries 
perceived  the  ultimate  object  of  his  pursuits ;  and  his 
strong  and  solitary  genius  laboured  to  perfect  his  designs 
without  the  solace  of  sympathy,  without  one  cheering  ap- 
probation. "  We  bees  do  not  provide  honey  for  our 
selves,"  exclaimed  Van  Helmont,  when  worn  out  by  the 
toils  of  chemistry,  and  still  contemplating,  amidst  tribu 
lation  and  persecution,  and  approaching  death,  his  "  Tree 
of  Life,"  which  he  imagined  he  had  discovered  in  the  ce- 
dar. But  with  a  sublime  mehincholy  his  spirit  breaks 
out :  "  My  mind  breathes  some  unheard-of  thing  within  ; 
though  I,  as  unprofitable  for  this  life,  shall  be  buried !" 
Such  were  the  mighty  but  indistinct  anticipations  of  this 
visionary  inventor,  the  father  of  modern  chemistry ! 

I  cannot  quit  this  short  record  of  the  fates  of  the  in- 
ventors in  science,  without  adverting  to  another  cause  of 
that  irritability  of  genius  which  is  so  closely  connected 
with  their  pursuits.     If  we  look  into  the  history  of  theo- 


MISGIVINGS  OF  INVESTORS.  107 

lies,  we  shall  be  surprised  at  the  vast  number  which  have 
"  not  left  a  rack  behind."  And  do  we  suppose  that  the 
inventors  themselves  were  not  at  times  alarmed  by  se- 
cret doubts  of  their  soundness  and  stability  ?  They  felt, 
too  often  for  their  repose,  that  the  noble  architecture 
which  they  had  raised  might  be  built  on  moveable  sands, 
and  be  found  only  in  the  dust  of  libraries ;  a  cloudy  day, 
or  a  fit  of  indigestion,  would  deprive  an  inventor  of  his 
theory  all  at  once ;  and  as  one  of  them  said,  "  after  din- 
ner, all  that  I  have  written  in  the  morning  appears  to  me 
dark,  incongruous,  nonsensical."  At  such  moments  we 
should  find  this  man  of  genius  in  no  pleasant  mood.  The 
true  cause  of  this  nervous  state  cannot,  nay,  must  not, 
be  confided  to  the  world:  the  honour  of  his  darling 
theory  will  always  be  dearer  to  his  pxide  than  the  con- 
fession of  even  slight  doubts  which  may  shake  its  truth. 
It  is  a  curious  fact  which  we  have  but  recently  dis- 
covered, that  Rousseau  was  disturbed  by  a  terror  he  ex- 
perienced, and  which  we  well  know  was  not  unfounded, 
that  his  theories  of  education  were  false  and  absurd.  He 
could  not  endure  to  read  a  page  in  his  own  "  Emile"* 
without  disgust  after  the  work  had  been  published !  He 
acknowledged  that  there  were  more  suffrages  against  his 
notions  than  for  them.  "  I  am  not  displeased,"  says  he, 
"with  myself  on  the  style  and  eloquence,  but  I  still 
dread  that  my  wi'itings  are  good  for  nothing  at  the 
bottom,  and  that  all  my  theories  are  full  of  extrava- 
gance." [Je  crains  toujour s  que  je  plche  par  le  fond,  et 
que  tons  mes  systhnes  ne  sont  que  des  extravagances.'\ 
Hartley  with  his  "  Vibrations  and  Vibratiuncles,"  Lieb- 
nitz  with  his  "  Monads,"  Cudworth  with  his  "  Plastic  Na- 
tures," Malebranche  with  his  paradoxical  doctrine  of 
"  Seeing  all  things  in  God,"  and  Burnet  with  his  hereti- 
cal "  Theory  of  the  Earth,"  must  unquestionably  at  times 

*In  a  letter  by  Hume  to  Blair,  written  in  1766,  apparently  first  pub- 
lisl.ved  in  the  Literary  Gazette,  Nov.  17,  1821. 


108  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

have  betrayed  an  irritability  which  those  about  them  may 
have  attributed  to  temper,  rather  than  to  genius. 

Is  our  man  of  genius — not  the  victim  of  fancy,  but  the 
slave  of  truth — a  learned  author  ?  Of  the  living  waters 
of  human  knowledge  it  cannot  be  said  that  "  K  a  man 
drink  thereof,  he  shall  never  thirst  again."  What 
volumes  remain  to  open !  what  manuscript  but  makes 
his  heart  palpitate  !  There  is  no  term  in  researches  which 
new  facts  may  not  alter,  and  a  single  date  may  not 
dissolve.  Truth !  thou  fascinating,  but  severe  mistress, 
thy  adorers  are  often  broken  down  in  thy  servitude, 
performing  a  thousand  unregarded  task-works  !  Now 
winding  thee  through  thy  labyrinth  with  a  single  thread, 
often  unravelling — now  feeling  their  way  in  darkness, 
doubtful  if  it  be  thyself  they  are  touching.  How  much 
of  the  real  labour  of  genius  and  erudition  must  remain 
concealed  from  the  world,  and  never  be  reached  by 
their  penetration  !  Montesquieu  has  described  this  feel- 
ing after  its  agony :  "  I  thought  I  should  have  killed 
myself  these  three  months  to  finish  a  morceau  (for  his 
great  work),  which  I  wished  to  insert,  on  the  origin  and 
revolutions  of  the  civil  laws  in  France.  You  will  read 
it  in  three  hours ;  but  I  do  assure  you  that  it  cost  me  so 
much  labour  that  it  has  whitened  my  hair."  Mr.  Hallam, 
stopping  to  admire  the  genius  of  Gibbon,  exclaims,  "  In 
this,  as  in  many  other  places,  the  masterly  boldness  and 
precision  of  his  outline,  which  astonish  those  who  have 
trodden  parts  of  the  same  field,  is  apt  to  escape  an 
uninformed  reader."  Thrice  has  my  learned  friend, 
Sharon  Turner,  recomposed,  with  renewed  researches, 
the  history  of  our  ancestors,  of  which  Milton  and  Hume 
had  despaired — thrice,  amidst  the  self-contests  of  ill-health 
and  professional  duties ! 

The  man  of  erudition  in  closing  his  elaborate  work  is 
still  exposed  to  the  fatal  omissions  of  wearied  vigilance, 
or  the  accidental  knowledge  of  some  inferior  mind,  and 


SENSITIVENESS  TO   CRITIOISM.  109 

always  to  the  reigning  taste,  whatever  it  chance  to  be,  of 
the  public.  Burnet  criticised  Varillas  unsparingly;* 
but  when  he  wrote  history  himself,  Harmer's  "  Specimen 
of  Errors  in  Burnet's  History,"  returned  Burnet  the 
pangs  which  he  had  inflicted  on  another.  Newton'a 
favourite  work  was  his  "  Chronology,"  which  he  had 
written  over  fifteen  times,  yet  he  desisted  from  iti 
publication  during  his  life-time,  from  the  ill-usage  oi 
which  he  complained.  Even  the  "  Optics"  of  Newtor. 
had  no  character  at  home  till  noticed  in  France.  Tht 
calm  temper  of  our  great  philosopher  was  of  so  fearful  s 
nature  in  regard  to  criticism,  that  Whiston  declares  thax 
he  would  not  pixblish  his  attack  on  the  "  Chronology,"  lesv 
it  might  have  killed  our  philosopher ;  and  thus  Bisho}^ 
Stillingfleet's  end  was  hastened  by  Locke's  confutation 
of  his  metaphysics.  The  feelings  of  Sir  John  Marsham 
could  hardly  be  less  irritable  when  he  found  his  greav 
work  tainted  by  an  accusation  that  it  was  not  friendly  trv 
revelation.f  When  the  learned  Pocock  published  » 
specimen  of  his  translation  of  Abulpharagias,  an 
Arabian  historian,  in  1649,  it  excited  great  interest;  nut 
in  1663,  when  he  gave  the  world  the  complete  version,  it 
met  with  no  encouragement :  in  the  course  ot  tnose 
thirteen  years,  the  genius  of  the  times  had  changr,<t,  and 
Oriental  studies  were  no  longer  in  request. 

The  great  Verulam  profoundly  felt  the  retardment  of 
his  fame ;  for  he  has  pathetically  expressed  this  sentiment 
in  his  testament,  where  he  bequeaths  his  name  to  pos- 
terity, AFTER   SOME   GENERATIONS  SHALL  BE  paSt.      BrUCe 


*  For  an  account  of  tbis  work,  and  Burnet's  expose  of  it,  see  "  Curi- 
osities of  Literature,"  vol.  i.  p.  132. — Ed. 

f  This  great  work  the  Carum  Chronicns,  was  published  in  1672,  and 
was  the  first  attempt  to  make  the  Egyptian  chronology  clear  and 
intelligible,  and  to  reconcile  the  whole  to  the  Scripture  chronology;  a 
labour  he  had  commenced  in  Diatriba  Ghronologica,  published  in 
1649.— Ed. 


110  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

sunk  into  his  grave  defrauded  of  that  just  fame  which 
his  pride  and  vivacity  perhaps  too  keenly  prized,  at  least 
for  his  happiness,  and  which  he  authoritatively  exacted 
from  an  unwilling  public.  Mortified  and  indignant  at 
the  reception  of  his  great  labour  by  the  cold-hearted 
scepticism  of  little  minds,  and  the  maliciousness  of  idling 
wits,  he,  whose  fortitude  had  toiled  through  a  life  of 
difficulty  and  danger,  could  not  endure  the  laugh  and 
scorn  of  public  opinion  ;  for  Bruce  there  was  a  simoon 
more  dreadful  than  the  Arabian,  and  from  which  genius 
cannot  hide  its  head.  Yet  Bruce  only  met  with  the  fate 
which  Marco  Polo  had  before  encountered;  whose 
faithful  narrative  had  been  contemned  by  his  contem- 
poraries, and  who  was  long  thrown  aside  among  le- 
gendary writers.* 

Harvey,  though  his  life  was  prolonge'd  to  his  eightieth 
year,  hardly  lived  to  see  his  great  discovery  of  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood  established :  no  physician  adopted  it ; 
and  when  at  length  it  was  received,  one  party  attempted  to 
rob  Harvey  of  the  honour  of  the  discovery,  while  another 
asserted  that  it  was  so  obvious,  that  they  could  only  ex- 
press their  astonishment  that  it  had  ever  escaped  obser- 
vation. Incredulity  and  envy  are  the  evil  spirits  which 
have  often  dogged  great  inventors  to  their  tomb,  and 
there  only  have  vanished. — But  I  seem  writing  the  "  ca- 

*  Ilis  stories  of  the  wealth  and  population  of  China,  which  he 
described  as  consisting  of  millions,  obtained  for  him  the  nickname  of 
Marco  Milionc  among  the  Venetians  and  other  small  Italian  states,  who 
wore  unable  to  comprehend  the  greatness  of  his  truthful  narratives  of 
Eastern  travel.  Upon  his  death-bed  he  was  adjured  by  his  friends  to 
retract  his  statements,  which  he  indignantly  refused.  It  was  long 
after  ere  his  truthfulness  was  established  by  other  travellers  ;  the 
Venetian  populace  gave  his  house  the  name  La  Carte  di  Milioni :  and 
a  vulgar  caricature  of  the  great  traveller  was  always  introduced  in 
their  carnivals,  who  was  termed  Marco  Milione;  and  delighted  them 
with  the  most  absurd  stories,  in  which  everything  was  computed  by 
millions. — Ed, 


EEPUTATION   DIFFICULT   OF   ACQUIRY.  m 

lamities  of  authors,"  and  have  only  begun  the  cata- 
logue. 

The  reputation  of  a  writer  of  taste  is  subject  to  more 
difficulties  than  any  other.  Similar  was  the  fate  of  the 
finest  ode-wi'iters  in  our  poetry.  On  their  publication, 
the  odes  of  Collins  could  find  no  readers ;  and  those  of 
Gi-ay,  though  ushered  into  the  reading  world  by  the 
fiishionable  press  of  Walpole,  were  condemned  as  failures. 
When  Racine  produced  his  "  Athalie,"  it  was  not  at  all 
relished :  Boileau  indeed  declared  that  he  understood 
these  matters  better  than  the  public,  and  prophesied  that 
the  public  would  return  to  it :  they  did  so ;  but  it  was 
sixty  years  afterwards  ;  and  Racine  died  without  sus- 
pecting that  "  Athalie "  was  liis  masterpiece.  I  have 
heard  one  of  our  great  poets  regret  that  he  had  devoted 
so  much  of  his  life  to  the  cultivation  of  his  art,  which 
arose  from  a  project  made  in  the  golden  vision  of  his 
youth :  "  at  a  time,"  said  he,  "  when  I  thought  that  the 
fountain  could  never  be  di'ied  up." — "  Your  baggage  will 
reach  posterity,"  was  observed. — "  There  is  much  to 
spare,"  was  the  answer. 

Every  day  we  may  observe,  of  a  work  of  genius,  that 
those  parts  which  have  all  the  raciness  of  the  soil,  and 
as  such  are  most  liked  by  its  admirers,  are  those  which 
are  the  most  criticised.  Modest  critics  shelter  them- 
selves under  that  general  amnesty  too  freely  granted, 
that  tastes  ai'e  allowed  to  differ ;  but  we  should  approxi- 
mate much  nearer  to  the  ti'uth,  if  we  were  to  say,  that 
but  few  of  mankind  are  prepared  to  relish  the  beautiful 
with  that  enlarged  taste  which  comprehends  all  the  forms 
of  feeling  which  genius  may  assume ;  forms  which  may 
be  necessarily  associated  with  defects.  A  man  of  genius 
composes  in  a  state  of  intellectual  emotion,  and  the  magic 
of  his  style  consists  in  the  movements  of  his  soul ;  but 
the  art  of  conveying  those  movements  is  far  separated 
from  the  feeling  which  inspires  them.     The  idea  in  the 


112  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

mind  is  not  always  found  under  the  pen,  any  more  than 
the  artist's  conception  can  always  breathe  in  his  pencil. 
Like  Flamingo's  image,  which  he  kept  polishing  till  his 
friend  exclaimed,  "  What  perfection  would  you  have  ?" — 
"  Alas  !"  exclaimed  the  sculptor,  "  the  original  I  am  la- 
bouring to  come  up  to  is  in  my  head,  but  not  yet  in  my 
hand." 

The  writer  toils,  and  repeatedly  toils,  to  throw  into 
our  minds  that  sympathy  with  which  we  hang  over  the 
illusion  of  his  pages,  and  become  himself  Ariosto  wrote 
sixteen  diflerent  ways  the  celebrated  stanza  descriptive 
of  a  tempest,  as  appears  by  his  MSS.  at  Ferrara ;  and  the 
version  he  preferred  was  the  last  of  the  sixteen.  We 
know  that  Petrarch  made  forty-four  alterations  of  a  single 
verse :  "  whether  for  the  thought,  the  expression,  or  the 
harmony,  it  is  evident  that  as  many  operations  in  the 
heart,  the  head,  or  the  ear  of  the  poet  occurred,"  observes 
a  man  of  genius,  Ugo  Foscolo.  Quintilian  and  Horace 
dread  the  over-fondness  of  an  author  for  his  compositions : 
alteration  is  not  always  improvement.  A  picture  over- 
finished  fails  in  its  effect.  If  the  hand  of  the  artist  can- 
not leave  it,  how  much  beauty  may  it  undo  !  yet  still  he 
is  lingering,  still  strengthening  the  weak,  still  subduing 
the  daring,  still  searching  for  that  single  idea  which 
awakens  so  many  in  the  minds  of  others,  while  often,  as 
it  once  happened,  the  dash  of  despair  hangs  the  foam  on 
the  horse's  nostrils.  I  have  known  a  great  sculptor,  who 
for  twenty  years  delighted  himself  with  forming  in  his 
mind  the  nymph  his  hand  was  always  creating.  How 
rapturously  he  beheld  her  !  wliat  inspiration  !  what  illu- 
sion !  Alas !  the  last  live  years  spoiled  the  beautiful 
which  he  had  once  reached,  and  could  not  stop  and 
finish ! 

The  art  of  composition,  indeed,  is  of  such  slow  attain- 
ment, that  a  man  of  genius,  late  in  life,  may  discover  how 
its  secret  conceals  itself  in  the  habit ;  how  discipline  con- 


SLOWNESS   OF   GREAT   WORKS.  113 

sists  ill  exercise,  bow  perfeetion  comes  from  experience, 
and  how  unity  is  the  last  eifort  of  judgment.  "When  Fox 
meditated  on  a  history  which  should  last  with  the  lan- 
guage, he  met  his  evil  genius  in  this  new  province.  The 
rapidity  and  the  fire  of  his  elocution  were  extinguished 
by  a  pen  unconsecrated  by  long  and  previous  study ;  he 
saw  that  he  could  not  class  with  the  great  historians  of 
every  great  people ;  he  complained,  while  he  mourned 
over  the  fragment  of  genius  which,  after  such  zealous 
preparation,  he  dared  not  complete.  Curran,  an  orator 
of  vehement  eloquence,  often  strikingly  original,  when 
late  in  life  he  was  desirous  of  cultivating  literary  compo- 
sition, unaccustomed  to  its  more  gradual  march,  found  a 
pen  cold,  and  destitute  of  every  grace.  Rousseau  has 
glowingly  described  the  ceaseless  inquietude  by  which 
he  obtained  the  seductive  eloquence  of  his  style ;  and  has 
said,  that  with  whatever  talent  a  man  may  be  born,  the 
art  of  writing  is  not  easily  obtained.  The  existing  man- 
uscripts of  Rousseau  display  as  many  erasures  as  those 
of  Ariosto  or  Petrarch ;  they  show  his  eagerness  to  dash 
down. his  first  thoughts,  and  the  art  by  which  he  raised 
them  to  the  impassioned  style  of  his  imagination.  The 
memoir  of  Gibbon  was  composed  seven  or  nine  times, 
and,  after  all,  was  left  unfinished ;  and  Buffoi;  tells  us 
that  he  wrote  his  "  Epoques  de  la  Xature  "  eighteen  times 
before  it  satisfied  his  taste.  Burns's  anxiety  in  finishing 
his  poems  was  great ;  "  All  my  poetry,"  said  he,  "  is  the 
effect  of  easy  composition,  but  of  laborious  correction." 

Pope,  when  employed  on  the  Iliad,  found  it  not  only 
occupy  his  thoughts  by  day,  but  haunting  his  dreams 
by  night,  and  once  wished  himself  hanged,  to  get  rid  of 
Homer :  and  that  he  experienced  often  such  literary  ago- 
nies, witness  his  description  of  the  depressions  and  eleva 
tions  of  genius : 

Who  pants  for  glory,  finds  but  short  repose ; 
A  breath  revives  him,  or  a  breath  o'erthrows  I 


114  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

When  Roraney  undertook  to  commence  the  first  sub- 
ject for  the  Shakspeare  Gallery,  in  the  rapture  of  enthu- 
siasm, amidst  the  sublime  and  pathetic  labouring  in  his 
whole  mind,  arose  the  terror  of  failure.  The  subject 
chosen  was  "  The  Tempest ;"  and,  as  Hayley  truly  ob- 
serves, it  created  many  a  tempest  in  the  fluctuating 
spirits  of  Romney.  The  vehement  desire  of  that  perfec- 
tion which  genius  conceives,  and  cannot  always  execute, 
held  a  perpetual  contest  with  that  dejection  of  spirits 
which  degrades  the  unhappy  suiFerer,  and  casts  him, 
grovelling  among  the  mean  of  his  class.  In  a  national 
work,  a  man  of  genius  pledges  his  honour  to  the  world  for 
its  performance ;  but  to  redeem  that  pledge,  there  is  a 
darkness  in  the  uncei'tain  issue,  and  he  is  I'isking  his  hon- 
our for  ever.  By  that  work  he  will  always  be  judged, 
for  public  failures  are  never  forgotten,  and  it  is  not  then 
a  party,  but  the  public  itself,  who  become  his  adversaries. 
With  Romney  it  was  "  a  fever  of  the  mad ;"  and  his 
friends  could  scarcely  inspire  him  with  sufficient  courage 
to  proceed  with  his  arduous  picture,  which  exercised  his 
imagination  and  his  pencil  for  several  years.  I  have 
heard  that  he  built  a  painting-room  purposely  for  this 
picture ;  and  never  did  an  anchorite  pour  forth  a  more 
fervent  orison  to  Heaven,  than  Romney  when  this  labour 
was  complete.  He  had  a  fine  genius,  with  all  its  solitary 
feelings,  but  he  was  uneducated,  and  incompetent  even  to 
write  a  letter ;  yet  on  this  occasion,  relieved  from  his 
intense  anxiety  under  so  long  a  work,  he  wrote  one  of  the 
most  eloquent.  It  is  a  document  in  the  history  of  genius,  * 
and  reveals  all  those  feelings  which  are  here  too  faintly 
described.*  I  once  heard  an  amiable  author,  whose  lite- 
rary career  has  perhaps  not  answered  the  fond  hopes  of 

*  "  My  Dear  Friunp, — Your  kindness  in  rejoicing  so  heartily  at  the 
birth  of  nij'  picture  has  given  mo  great  satisfaction. 

"There  has  been  an  anxiety  labouring  in  my  mind  the  greater  part 
of  the  last  twelvemonth.     At  times  it  had  nearly  overwhelmed  me.     I 


ANXIETY   OF   AUTHORS.  115 

his  youth,  half  in  anger  and  in  love,  declare  that  he 
would  retire  to  some  solitude,  where,  if  any  one  would 
follow  him,  he  would  found  a  new  order — the  order  of 

THE    DISAPPOINTED. 

Thus  the  days  of  a  man  of  genius  are  passed  in  labours 
as  unremitting  and  exhausting  as  those  of  the  artisan. 
The  world  is  not  always  aware,  that  to  some,  meditation, 
composition,  and  even  conversation,  may  inflict  pains 
undetected  by  the  eye  and  the  tenderness  of  friendship. 
Whenever  Rousseau  passed  a  morning  in  society,  it  was 
observed,  that  in  the  evening  he  was  dissatisfied  and  dis- 
tressed ;  and  John  Hunter,  in  a  mixed  company,  found 
that  conversation  fatigued,  instead  of  amusing  him. 
Hawkesworth,  in  the  second  paper  of  the  "  Adventurer," 
has  drawn,  from  his  own  feelings,  an  eloquent  compara- 
tive estimate  of  intellectual  with  corporeal  labour ;  it 
may  console  the  humble  mechanic ;  and  Plato,  in  his 
work  on  "Laws,"  seems  to  have  been  aware  of  this 
analogy,  for  he  consecrates  all  working  men  or  artisans 
to  Vulcan  and  Minerva,  because  both  those  deities  alike  are 
hard  labourers.  Yet  with  genius  all  does  not  terminate, 
even  with  the  most  skilful  labour.  What  the  toiling 
Vulcan  and  the  thoughtful  Minerva  may  want,  will  too 
often  be  absent — the  presence  of  the  Graces.  In  the  alle- 
gorical picture  of  the  School  of  Design,  by  Carlo  Maratti, 
where  the  students  are  led  through  their  various  studies, 
in  the  opening  clouds  above  the  academy  are  seen  the 
Graces,  hovering  over  their  pupils,  with  an  inscription 
they  must  often  recollect — Senza  di  noi  ogni  fatica 
<5  vana. 

The  anxious  uncertainty  of  an  author  for  his  composi- 
tions resembles  the  anxiety  of  a  lover  when  he  has  written 

thought  I  sho'ild  absolutely  have  sunk  into  despair.  0 1  what  a  kind 
friend  is  in  those  times !  I  thank  God,  wliatever  my  picture  may  be, 
I  can  say  thus  much,  I  am  a  greater  philosopher  and  a  better  Chris- 
tian." 


116  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

to  a  mistress  who  has  not  yet  decided  on  his  claims; 
he  repents  his  labour,  for  he  thinks  he  has  written  too 
much,  while  he  is  mortified  at  recollecting  that  he  had 
omitted  some  things  which  he  imagines  would  have 
secured  the  object  of  his  wishes.  Madame  De  Stael,  who 
has  often  entered  into  feelings  familiar  to  a  literary  and 
political  family,  in  a  parallel  between  ambition  and 
genius,  has  distinguished  them  in  this ;  that  while  "  am- 
bition perseveres  in  the  desire  of  acquiring  power,  genius 
flags  of  itself.  -Genius  in  the  midst  of  society  is  a  pain, 
an  internal  fever  which  would  require  to  be  treated  as  a 
real  disease,  if  the  records  of  glory  did  not  soften  the 
sufferings  it  produces."  — "  Athenians  !  what  troubles 
have  you  not  cost  me,"  exclaimed  Demosthenes,  "  that  1 
may  be  talked  of  by  you  !" 

These  moments  of  anxiety  often  darken  the  brightest 
hours  of  genius.  Racine  had  extreme  sensibility;  the 
pain  inflicted  by  a  severe  criticism  outweighed  all  the 
applause  he  received.  He  seems  to  have  felt,  what  he 
was  often  repi-oached  with,  that  his  Greeks,  his  Jews, 
and  his  Turks,  were  all  inmates  of  Versailles.  He  had 
two  critics,  who,  like  our  Dennis  with  Pope  and  Addison, 
regularly  dogged  his  pieces  as  they  appeared.*  Cor- 
neille's  objections  he  would  attribute  to  jealousy — at  his 
pieces  when  burlesqued  at  the  Italian  theatref  he  would 
smile  outwardly,  though  sick  at  heart;  but  his  son  in- 
forms us,  that  a  stroke  of  raillery  from  his  witty  friend 
Chapelle,  whose  pleasantry  hardly  sheathed  its  bitterness, 
sunk  more  deeply  into  liis  heart  than  the  burlesques  at 
the  Italian  theatre,  the  protest  of  Corneille,  and  the 
iteration  of  the  two  Dennises.     More  than  once  Moli^re 

*  Seo  tho  article  "  On  the  Influence  of  a  bad  temper  in  Criticism  "  in 
"Calamities  of  Authors,"  for  a  notice  of  Dennis  and  his  career. — Ed. 

f  See  the  article  on  "The  Sensibility  of  Racine"  in  "Literary  Mis- 
cellanies "  (in  the  present  volume),  and  that  on  "  Parody,"  in  "  Curioai- 
ties  of  Literature,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  469. — Ed. 


ANXIETY  OF  AUTHORS.  117 

and  Racine,  in  vexation  of  spirit,  resolved  to  abandon 
their  dramatic  career;  it  was  Boileau  who  ceaselessly 
animated  their  languor:  "Posterity,"  he  cried,  "will 
avenge  the  injustice  of  our  age !"  And  Congreve's 
comedies  met  with  such  moderate  success,  that  it  appears 
the  author  was  extremely  mortified,  and  on  the  ill  recep- 
tion of  The  Way  of  the  World,  determined  to  write  no 
more  for  the  stage.  When  he  told  Voltaire,  on  the 
French  wit's  visit,  that  Voltaire  must  consider  him  as  a 
private  gentleman,  and  not  as  an  author, — which  apparent 
affectation  called  down  on  Congreve  the  sarcastic  sever- 
ity of  the  French  author,* — more  of  mortification  and  hu- 
mility might  have  been  in  Congreve's  language  than  of 
affectation  or  pride. 

The  life  of  Tasso  abounds  with  pictures  of  a  complete 
exhaustion  of  this  kind.  His  contradictory  critics  had 
perplexed  him  with  the  most  intricate  literary  discus- 
sions, and  either  occasioned  or  increased  a  mental  aliena- 
tion. In  one  of  his  letters,  we  find  that  he  repents  the 
composition  of  his  great  poem,  for  although  his  own 
taste  approved  of  that  marvellous,  which  still  forms  a 
noble  part  of  its  creation,  yet  he  confesses  that  his  cold 
reasoning  critics  have  decided  that  the  history  of  his 
hero,  Godfrey,  required  another  species  of  conduct. 
"  Hence,"  cries  the  unhappy  bard,  "  doubts  torment  me ; 
but  for  the  past,  and  what  is  done,  I  know  of  no  remedy ;" 
and  he  longs  to  precipitate  the  publication,  that  "  he  may 
be  delivered  from  misery  and  agony."  He  solemnly 
swears — "Did  not  the  circumstances  of  my  situation 
compel  me,  I  would  not  print  it,  even  perhaps  during 
my  life,  I  so  much  doubt  of  its  success."  Such  was  the 
painful  state  of  fear  and  doubt  experienced  by  the  author 
of  the  "  Jerusalem  Delivered,"  when  he  gave  it  to  the 
world;  a  state  of  suspense,  among  the  children  of  im- 

*  Voltaire  quietly  said  he  should  not  have  troubled  himself  to  visit 
him  if  he  had  been  merely  a  private  gentleman. — Ed. 


118  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

agination,  in  which  none  are  more  liable  to  participate 
than  the  true  sensitive  artist.  We  may  now  inspect  the 
severe  correction  of  Tasso's  muse,  in  the  fac-simile  of  a 
page  of  his  manuscripts  in  Mr.  Dibdin's  late  "Tour." 
She  seems  to  have  inflicted  tortures  on  his  pen,  supass- 
ing  even  those  which  may  be  seen  in  the  fac-simile  page 
which,  thirty  years  ago,  I  gave  of  Pope's  Homer.*  At 
Florence  may  still  be  viewed  the  many  works  begun  and 
abandoned  by  the  genius  of  Michael  Angelo ;  they  are 
preserved  inviolate — "  so  sacred  is  the  terror  of  Michael 
Angelo's  genius !"  exclaims  Forsyth.  These  works  are 
not  always  to  be  considered  as  failures  of  the  chisel ; 
they  appear  rather  to  have  been  rejected  for  coming 
short  of  the  artist's  first  conceptions  :  yet,  in  a  strain  of 
sublime  poetry,  he  has  preserved  his  sentiments  on  the 
force  of  intellectual  labour ;  he  thought  tliat  there  was 
nothing  which  the  imagination  conceived,  that  could  not 
be  made  visible  in  marble,  if  the  hand  were  made  to 
obey  the  mind  : — 

Non  ha  I'ottimo  artista  alcun  concetto, 
Ch'  un  marmo  solo  in  se  nou  circoscriva 
Col  suo  sovercliio,  e  solo  a  quello  arriva 

La  man  che  obbedisce  all'  intelletto. 


The  sculptor  never  yet  conceived  a  thought 
That  yielding  marble  has  refused  to  aid ; 

But  never  with  a  mastery  he  wrought — 
Save  when  the  hand  the  intellect  obeyed. 

An  interesting  domestic  story  has  been  preserved  of 
Gesner,  who  so  zealously  devoted  his  graver  and  his 
pencil  to  the  arts.  His  sensibility  was  ever  struggling 
after  that  ideal  excellence  which  he  could  not  attain. 
Often  he  sunk  into  fits  of  melancholy,  and,  gentle  as  he 

*  It  now  forms  the  frontispiece  to  vol.  ii.  of  the  last  edition  of  the 
''  Curiosities  of  Literature." — Ed. 


INTELLI<:CTUAL  LABOUR.  119 

was,  the  tenderness  of  his  wile  and  friends  could  not 
soothe  his  distempered  feelings ;  it  was  necessary  to 
abandon  him  to  his  own  thoughts,  till,  after  a  long 
abstinence  from  his  neglected  works,  in  a  lucid  moment, 
some  accident  occasioned  him  to  return  to  them.  In  one 
of  these  hypochondria  of  genius,  after  a  long  interval 
of  despair,  one  morning  at  breakfast  with  his  wife,  his 
eye  fixed  on  one  of  his  pictures  :  it  was  a  group  of  fauns 
with  young  shepherds  dancing  at  the  entrance  of  a 
cavern  shaded  with  vines ;  his  eye  appeared  at  length  to 
glisten ;  and  a  sudden  return  to  good  humour  broke  out 
in  this  lively  apostrophe — "  Ah !  see  those  playful  chil- 
dren, they  always  dance !"  This  was  the  moment  of 
gaiety  and  inspiration,  and  he  flew  to  his  forsaken  easel. 
La  Harpe,  an  author  by  profession,  observes,  that  as  it 
has  been  shown  that  there  are  some  maladies  peculiar  to 
artisans* — there  are  also  some  sorrows  peculiar  to  them, 
and  which  the  world  can  neither  pity  nor  soften,  because 
they  do  not  enter  into  their  experience.  The  querulous 
language  of  so  many  men  of  genius  has  been  sometimes 
attributed  to  causes  very  different  from  the  real  ones — 
the  most  fortunate  live  to  see  their  talents  contested  and 
their  best  works  decried.  Assuredly  many  an  author  has 
sunk  into  his  grave  without  the  consciousness  of  having 
obtained  that  fame  for  which  he  had  sacrificed  an  arduous 
life.  The  too  feeling  Smollett  has  left  this  testimony  to 
posterity : — "  Had  some  of  those,  who  are  pleased  to  call 
themselves  my  friends,  been  at  any  pains  to  deserve  the 
charactei*,  and  told  me  ingenuously  what  I  had  to  expect 
in  the  capacity  of  an  author,  I  should,  in  all  probability, 
have  spared  myself  the  incredible  labour  and  chagrin  I 

*  See  Ramazini,  "  De  Morbis  Artificium  Diatriba."  wliich  Dr.  James 
translated  in  1750.  It  is  a  sad  reflection,  resulting  from  this  curious 
treatise,  that  tiie  arts  entail  no  small  mischief  upon  their  respective 
workmen ;  so  that  the  means  hj  which  they  hve  are  too  often  the 
occasion  of  their  being  hurried  out  of  the  world. 


120  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

have  since  undergone."  And  Smollett  was  a  popular 
writer  !  Pope's  solemn  declaration  in  the  preface  to  his 
collected  works  comes  by  no  means  short  of  Smollett's 
avowal.  Hume's  philosophical  indifference  could  often 
suppress  that  irritability  which  Pope  and  Smollett  fully 
indulged. 

But  Avere  the  feelings  of  Hume  more  obtuse,  or  did  his 
temper,  gentle  as  it  was  by  constitution,  bear,  with  a 
saintly  patience,  the  mortifications  his  literary  life  so  long 
endured  ?  After  recomposing  two  of  his  works,  which 
incurred  the  same  neglect  in  their  altered  form,  he  raised 
the  most  sanguine  hopes  of  his  History,  but  he  tells  us, 
"  miserable  was  my  disappointment !"  Although  he 
never  deigned  to  reply  to  his  opponents,  yet  they 
haunted  him  ;  and  an  eye-wntness  has  thus  described  the 
irritated  author  discovering  in  conversation  his  sup- 
pressed resentment — "  His  forcible  mode  of  expression, 
the  brilliant  quick  movements  of  his  eyes,  and  the  ges- 
tures of  his  body,"  these  betrayed  the  pangs  of  con- 
tempt, or  of  aversion  !  Hogarth,  in  a  fit  of  the  spleen, 
advertised  that  he  liad  determined  not  to  give  the  world 
any  more  original  works,  and  intended  to  pass  the  rest 
of  his  days  in  painting  portraits.  The  same  advertise- 
ment is  marked  by  farther  irritability.  He  contemptu- 
ously offers  the  purchasers  of  his  "  Analysis  of  Beauty," 
to  present  them  gratis  with  an  "eighteenpenny  pam- 
phlet," published  by  Ramsay  the  painter,  written  in 
opposition  to  Hogarth's  principles.  So  untameable  was 
the  irritability  of  this  great  inventor  in  art,  that  he  at- 
tempts to  conceal  his  irritation  by  offering  to  dispose  gra- 
tuitously  of  the  criticism  which  had  disturbed  his  nights.* 

*  Hofi;arth  was  not  without  reason  for  exasperation.  He  was  se- 
verely attacked  for  liis  thoorios  about  tlio  curved  line  of  beauty,  which 
was  branded  as  a  foolisli  attempt  to  prove  crookedness  elogart,  and 
himself  vulgarly  caricatured.  It  was  even  asserted  that  the  theory 
was  stolen  from  Lomazzo. — Ed. 


IRRITABILITY   OF  GENIUS,  121 

Parties  confederate  against  a  man  of  genius, — as  hap- 
pened to  Coi-neille,  to  D'Avenant,*  and  Milton ;  and  a 
Pradon  and  a  Settle  carry  away  the  meed  of  a  Racine  and 
a  Drydcn.  It  was  to  support  the  drooping  spirit  of  his 
friend  Racine  on  the  opposition  raised  against  Phgedra, 
that  Boileau  addressed  to  him  an  epistle  "  On  the  Utility  to 
be  drawn  from  the  Jealousy  of  the  Envious."  The  calm 
dignity  of  the  histoi'ian  De  Thou,  amidst  the  passions  of 
his  times,  coniidently  expected  that  justice  from  posterity 
which  his  own  age  refused  to  his  early  and  his  late  labour. 
That  great  man  was,  however,  compelled  by  his  injured 
feelings,  to  compose  a  poem  under  the  name  of  another,  to 
^erve  as  his  apology  against  the  intolerant  court  of  Rome, 
and  the  factious  politicians  of  France ;  it  was  a  noble  sub- 
terfuge to  which  a  great  genius  was  forced.  The  acquaint- 
ances of  the  poet  Collins  probably  complained  of  his 
wayward  humours  and  irritability ;  but  how  could  they 
sympathise  with  the  secret  mortification  of  the  poet,  who 
imagined  that  he  had  composed  his  Pastorals  on  wrong 
principles,  or  when,  in  the  agony  of  his  soul,  he  consigned 
to  the  flames  with  his  own  hands  his  unsold,  but  immor- 
tal odes  ?  Can  Ave  forget  the  dignified  complaint  of  the 
Rambler,  with  which  he  awfully  closes  his  work,  appeal- 
ing to  posterity  ? 

Genius  contracts  those  peculiarities  of  which  it  is  so 
loudly  accused  in  its  solitary  occupations — that  loftiness 
of  spirit,  those  quick  jealousies,  those  excessive  afiections 
and  aversions  which  view  everything  as  it  passes  in  its 
own  ideal  world,  and  rarely  as  it  exists  in  the  mediocrity 
of  reality.    If  this  irritability  of  genius  be  a  malady  which 

*  See  "  Quarrels  of  Aathors,"  p.  403,  on  the  confederacy  of  several 
wits  against  D'Avenant,  a  great  genius;  where  I  discovered  that  a 
volume  of  poems,  said  ''to  be  written  by  the  author's  friends,"  which 
had  hitherto  been  referred  to  as  a  volume  of  panegyrics,  contains 
nothing  but  irony  and  satire,  which  had  escaped  the  discovery  of  so 
many  transcribers  of  title-pages,  frequently  miscalled  literary  historians. 


122  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

has  raged  even  among  philosophers,  we  must  not  be  sur- 
prised at  the  tenij^erameut  of  poets.  These  last  have 
abandoned  their  country;  they  have  changed  their  name ; 
they  have  punished  themselves  with  exile  in  the  rage  of 
their  disorder.  No  !  not  poets  only.  Descartes  sought 
in  vain,  even  in  his  secreted  life,  for  a  refuge  for  his 
genius;  he  thought  himself  persecuted  in  France,  he 
thought  himself  calumniated  among  strangers,  and  he 
went  and  died  in  Sweden ;  and  little  did  that  man  of  genius 
think  that  his  countrymen  wol^ld  beg  to  have  his  ashes 
restored  to  them.  Even  the  reasoning  Hume  once  pro- 
posed to  change  his  name  and  his  country ;  and  I  believe 
did.  The  great  poetical  genius  of  our  own  times  has 
openly  alienated  himself  from  the  land  of  his  brothers. 
He  becomes  immortal  in  the  language  of  a  people  whom 
he  would  contemn.*  Does  he  accept  with  ingratitude 
the  fame  he  loves  more  than  life  ? 

Such,  then,  is  that  state  of  irritability  in  which  men  of 
genius  participate,  whether  they  be  inventors,  men  of 
learning,  fine  writers,  or  artists.  It  is  a  state  not  friendly 
to  equality  of  temper.  In  the  various  humours  inci- 
dental to  it,  when  they  are  often  deeply  affected,  the 
•cause  escapes  all  perception  of  sympathy.     The  intellect- 

*  I  shall  preserve  a  manuscript  uote  of  Lord  Byron  on  this  passage ; 
not  without  a  hope  that  we  shall  never  receive  from  him  the  genius  of 
Italian  poetrj',  otherwise  than  in  the  language  of  his  '^father  lancl;^'  an 
expressive  term,  which  I  adopted  from  the  Dutch  language  some  yeara 
past,  and  which  I  have  seen  since  sanctioned  by  the  pens  of  Lord  Byron 
and  of  Mr.  Southey. 

Ilis  lordship  has  here  observed,  "  It  is  not  my  fault  that  I  am  obliged 
to  write  in  English.  If  I  understood  my  present  language  equally  well, 
I  would  write  in  it;  but  this  will  require  ten  years  at  least  to  form  a 
style :  no  tongue  so  easy  to  acquire  a  little  of,  or  so  difficult  to  master 
thorouglily,  as  Italian."  On  the  same  page  I  find  the  following  note: 
"  Wliat  was  rumoured  of  me  in  that  language  ?  If  true,  I  was  unfit 
for  Kugland:  if  false,  England  was  unfit  for  me: — 'There  is  a  world 
elsewhere.'  I  have  never  regretted  for  a  moment  that  country,  but 
often  that  1  ever  returned  to  it  at  all." 


GENIUS   AND   SOCIETY.  123 

ual  malady  eludes  even  the  tenderness  of  friendship.  At 
those  moments,  the  lightest  injury  to  the  feelings,  which 
at  another  time  would  make  no  imjsression,  may  produce 
a  perturbed  state  of  feeling  in  the  warm  temper,  or  the 
corroding  chagrin  of  a  self-wounded  spiiit.  These  are 
moments  which  claim  the  encouragements  of  a  friendship 
animated  by  a  high  esteem  for  the  intellectual  excellence 
of  the  man  of  genius ;  not  the  general  intercourse  of  so- 
ciety ;  not  the  insensibility  of  the  dull,  nor  the  levity  of 
the  volatile. 

Men  of  genius  are  often  reverenced  only  where  they 
are  known  by  their  writings — intellectual  beings  in  the 
romance  of  life ;  in  its  history,  they  are  men  !  Erasmus 
compared  them  to  the  great  figures  in  tapestry-work,  which 
lose  their  effect  when  not  seen  at  a  distance.  Their  foibles 
and  their  infirmities  are  obvious  to  their  associates,  often 
only  capable  of  discerning  these  qualities.  The  defects 
of  great  men  are  the  consolation  of  the  dunces. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

The  spirit  of  literature  and  the  spirit  of  society. — The  Inventors. — So- 
ciety offers  seduction  and  not  reward  to  men  of  genius. — The  notions 
of  persons  of  fashion  of  men  of  genius. — The  habitudes  of  the  man 
of  genius  distinct  from  those  of  the  man  of  society. — Study,  medita- 
tion, and  enthusiasm,  the  progress  of  genius. — The  disagreement 
between  the  men  of  the  world  and  the  literary  character. 

THE  LsTENTOKS,  who  inherited  little  or  nothing  from 
their  predecessors,  appear  to  have  pursued  their  in- 
sulated studies  in  the  full  independence  of  their  mind  and 
development  of  their  inventive  faculty;  they  stood  apart, 
in  seclusion,  the  solitary  lights  of  their  age.  Such  were  the 
founders  of  our  literature — Bacon  and  Hobbes,  Newton 


124:  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

and  Milton.  Even  so  late  as  the  days  of  Dryden,  Addi- 
son, and  Pope,  the  man  of  genius  drew  his  circle  round 
his  intimates ;  his  day  was  uniform,  his  habits  unbroken  ; 
and  he  was  never  too  far  removed,  nor  too  long  estranged 
from  meditation  and  reverie :  his  works  were  the  sources 
of  his  pleasure  ere  they  became  the  labours  of  his  pride. 

But  when  a  more  uniform  light  of  knowledge  illumin- 
ates from  all  sides,  the  genius  of  society,  made  up  of  so 
many  sorts  of  genius,  becomes  greater  than  the  genius  of 
the  individual  who  has  entix'ely  yielded  himself  up  to  his 
solitary  art.  Hence  the  character  of  a  man  of  genius 
becomes  subordinate.  A  conversation  age  succeeds  a 
studious  one;  and  the  family  of  genius,  the  poet,  the 
painter,  and  the  student,  are  no  longer  recluses.  They 
mix  with  their  rivals,  who  are  jealous  of  equality,  or  with 
others  who,  incapable  of  valuing  them  for  themselves 
alone,  rate  them  but  as  parts  of  an  integral. 

The  man  of  genius  is  now  trammelled  with  the  arti- 
ficial and  mechanical  forms  of  life ;  and  in  too  close  an 
intercourse  with  society,  the  loneliness  and  raciness  of 
thinking  is  modified  away  in  its  seductive  conventions. 
An  excessive  indulgence  in  the  pleasures  of  social  life  con- 
stitutes the  great  interests  of  a  luxuriant  and  opulent 
age ;  but  of  late,  while  the  arts  of  assembling  in  large 
societies  have  been  practised,  varied  by  all  forms,  and 
pushed  on  to  all  excesses,  it  may  become  a  question 
whether  by  them  our  happiness  is  as  much  improved,  or 
our  individual  character  as  well  formed  as  in  a  society 
not  so  heterogeneous  and  unsocial  as  that  crowd  termed, 
with  the  sort  of  modesty  peculiar  to  our  times,  "  a  small 
party :"  the  simplicity  of  parade,  the  humility  of  pride 
engendered  by  the  egotism  which  multiplies  itself  in  pro- 
portion to  the  numbers  it  assembles. 

It  may,  too,  be  a  question  whether  the  literary  man 
and  the  artist  are  not  immolating  their  genius  to  society 
when,  in  the  shadowiness  of  assumed  talents — that  coun- 


GENIUS  AND  SOCIETY.  125 

terfeitiiig  of  all  shapes — they  lose  their  real  form,  with 
the  mockery  of  Proteus.  But  nets  of  roses  catch  their 
feet,  and  a  path,  where  all  the  senses  are  flattered,  is  now 
opened  to  win  an  Epictetus  from  his  hut.  The  art  of 
multiplying  the  enjoyments  of  society  is  discovered  iii  the 
morning  lounge,  the  evening  dinner,  and  the  midnight 
coterie.  In  frivolous  fatigues,  and  vigils  without  medi- 
tation, perish  the  unvalued  hours  which,  true  genius 
knows,  are  always  too  brief  for  art,  and  too  rare  to  catch 
its  inspirations.  Hence  so  many  of  our  contemporaries, 
whose  card-racks  are  crowded,  have  produced  only  flashy 
fragments.  Efibrts,  but  not  works — they  seem  to  be 
effects  without  causes ;  and  as  a  great  author,  who  is  not 
one  of  them,  once  observed  to  me,  "  They  waste  a  barrel 
of  gunpowder  in  squibs." 

And  yet  it  is  seduction,  and  not  reward,  which  mere 
fashionable  society  offers  the  man  of  true  genius.  He  will 
be  sought  for  with  enthusiasm,  but  he  cannot  escape  from 
his  certain  fate — ^that  of  becoming  tiresome  to  his  pre- 
tended admirers. 

At  first  the  idol — shortly  he  is  changed  into  a  victim. 
He  forms,  indeed,  a  figure  in  their  little  pageant,  and  is 
invited  as  a  sort  of  improvisatore ;  but  the  esteem  they 
concede  to  him  is  only  a  part  of  the  system  of  politeness ; 
and  should  he  be  dull  in  discovering  the  favourite  quality 
of  their  self-love,  or  in  particijjating  in  their  volatile 
tastes,  he  will  find  frequent  opportunities  of  observing, 
with  the  sage  at  the  court  of  Cyprus,  that  "  what  he 
knows  is  not  proper  for  this  place,  and  what  is  proper  for 
this  place  he  knows  not."  This  society  takes  little  per- 
sonal interest  in  the  literary  character.  Horace  Walpole 
lets  us  into  this  secret  when  writing  to  another  man  of 
fashion,  on  such  a  man  of  genius  as  Gray — "  I  agree  with 
you  most  absolutely  in  your  opinion  about  Gray ;  he  is 
the  worst  company  in  the  world.  From  a  melancholy 
turn,  from  living  reclusely,  and  from  a  little  too  much 


126  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

dignity,  he  never  converses  easily ;  all  his  words  are 
measured  and  chosen,  and  formed  into  sentences  :  his 
writings  are  admirable^he  himself  is  not  agreeable." 
This  volatile  being  in  himself  pemonified  the  quintesseuce 
of  that  society  which  is  called  "  the  world,'  and  could  not 
endure  that  equality  of  intellect  which  genius  exacts.  He 
rejected  Chatterton,  and  quarrelled  with  every  literary 
man  and  every  artist  whom  he  first  invited  to  familiarity 
■ — and  then  hated.  Witness  the  fates  of  Bentley,  of  Muntz, 
of  Gray,  of  Cole,  and  others.  Such  a  mind  was  incapa- 
ble of  appreciating  the  literary  glory  on  which  the  mighty 
mind  of  Burke  was  meditating.  Walpole  knew  Burke  at 
a  critical  moment  of  his  life,  and  he  has  recorded  his  own 
feelings : — "  There  was  a  young  Mr.  Burke  who  wrote  a 
book,  in  the  style  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  that  was  much 
admired.  He  is  a  sensible  man,  but  has  not  xcorn  off  his 
authorism  yet,  and  thinks  there  is  nothing  so  charming 
as  writers,  and  to  be  one :  he  loill  know  better  one  of  these 
daysy  .  Gray  and  Burke  !  What  mighty  men  must  be 
submitted  to  the  petrifying  sneer — that  indifference  of 
selfism  for  great  sympathies — of  tl?ls  volatile  and  heart- 
less man  of  literature  and  rank ! 

That  thing  of  silk, 
Sporus,  that  mere  white  curd  of  ass's  milk  I 

The  confidential  confession  of  Racine  to  his  son  is  re- 
markable : — "  Do  not  think  that  I  am  sought  after  by  the 
great  for  my  dramas ;  Corneille  composes  nobler  verses 
than  mine,  but  no  one  notices  him,  and  he  only  pleases 
by  the  mouth  of  the  actors.  I  never  allude  to  my  works 
when  with  men  of  the  world,  but  I  amuse  them  about 
matters  they  like  to  hear.  My  talent  with  them  consists, 
not  in  making  tliem  feel  that  I  have  any,  but  in  showing 
tlicm  tliat  tlu^y  have."  Racine  treated  the  great  like 
the  children  of  society ;  Corneille  would  not  compromise 
for  the  tribute  he  exacted,  but  he  consoled  himself  when, 


GENIUS  AND   SOCIETY.  127 

at  his  entrance  into  the  theatre,  the  audience  usually  rose 
to  salute  him.  The  great  comic  genius  of  France,  who 
indeed  was  a  very  thoughtful  and  serious  man,  addressed 
a  poem  to  the  painter  Mignard,  expressing  his  conviction 
that  "  the  court,"  by  which  a  Frenchman  of  the  court  of 
Louis  XIV.  meant  the  society  we  call  "  fashionable,"  is 
fatal  to  the  perfection  of  art — • 

Qui  se  donne  a  la  cour  se  derobe  a  son  art ; 

Un  esprit  partage  rarement  se  consomme, 

Et  les  emplois  de  feu  demandent  tout  I'homme. 

Has  not  the  fate  in  society  of  our  reigning  literary 
favom-ites  been  uniform  ?  Their  mayoralty  hardly  ex- 
ceeds the  year:  they  are  pushed  aside  to  put  in  their 
place  another,  who,  in  his  turn,  must  descend.  Such  is 
the  history  of  the  literary  character  encountering  the 
perpetual  difficulty  of  appearing  what  he  really  is  not, 
while  he  sacrifices  to  a  few,  in  a  certain  corner  of  the 
metropolis,  who  have  long  fantastically  styled  themselves 
"  the  world,"  that  more  dignified  celebrity  which  makes 
an  author's  name  more  familiar  than  his  person.  To  one 
who  appeared  astonished  at  the  extensive  celebrity  of 
Buffon,  the  modern  Pliny  replied,  "  I  have  passed  fifty 
years  at  my  desk."  Haydn  would  not  yield  up  to  society 
more  than  those  hours  which  were  not  devoted  to  study. 
These  were  indeed  but  few :  and  such  were  the  uniformity 
and  reth-edness  of  his  life,  that  "  He  was  for  a  long  time 
the  only  musical  man  in  Europe  who  was  ignorant  of  the 
celebrity  of  Joseph  Haydn."  And  has  not  one,  the  most 
sublime  of  the  race,  sung, 

che  seggendo  in  piuma, 
In  Fama  non  si  vien,  ne  sotto  coltre ; 
Sanza  la  qual  chi  sua  vita  consuma 
Cotal  vesti^io  in  terra  di  se  lascia 
Qual  furamo  in  aere,  ed  in  acqua  la  schiuma. 

For  not  on  downy  plumes,  nor  under  shade 
Of  canopy  reposing.  Fame  is  won 


128  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

"Without  wbich,  whosoe'er  consumes  his  days, 
Leaveth  such  vestige  of  himself  on  earth 
As  smoke  iu  air,  or  foam  upon  the  wave.* 

But  men  of  genius,  in  their  intercourse  with  persons  of 
fashion,  have  a  secret  inducement  to  coui't  that  circle. 
They  feel  a  perpetual  want  of  having  the  reality  of  their 
talents  confirmed  to  themselves,  and  they  often  step  into 
society  to  "observe  in  what  degree  they  are  objects 
of  attention;  for  though  ever  acciised  of  vanity,  the 
greater  part  of  men  of  genius  feel  that  their  existence, 
as  such,  must  depend  on  the  opinion  of  others.  This 
standard  is  in  truth  always  problematical  and  variable ; 
yet  they  cannot  hope  to  find  a  more  certain  one  among 
their  rivals,  who  at  all  times  are  adroitly  depreciating 
their  brothers,  and  "  dusking "  their  lustre.  They  dis- 
cover among  those  cultivators  of  literature  and  the  arts 
who  have  recourse  to  them  for  their  pleasure,  impas- 
sioned admirers,  rather  than  unmerciful  judges — judges 
who  have  only  time  to  acquire  that  degree  of  illumina- 
tion which  is  just  sufiicient  to  set  at  ease  the  fears  of 
these  claimants  of  genius. 

When  literary  men  assemble  together,  what  mimetic 
friendships,  in  their  mutual  corruption !  Creatures  of 
intrigue,  they  borrow  other  men's  eyes,  and  act  by  feel- 
ings often  even  contrary  to  their  own :  they  wear  a 
mask  on  their  face,  and  only  sing  a  tune  they  have 
caught.  Some  hierophant  in  their  mysteries  proclaims 
their  elect  whom  they  have  to  initiate,  and  their  profane 
who  are  to  stand  apart  under  their  ban.  They  bend  to 
the  spirit  of  the  age,  but  they  do  not  elevate  the  public 
to  them;  they  care  not  for  truth,  but  only  study  to 
produce  effect,  and  they  do  nothing  for  fame  but  what 
obtains  an  instant  purpose.  Yet  their  fame  is  not  there- 
fore the  more  real,  for  everything  connected  with 
fashion  becomes  obsolete.     Her  ear  has  a  great  suscepti- 

•  Gary's  Dante,  Canto  xiiv. 


GENIUS  AND  SOCIETY.  129 

bility  of  weariness,  and  lier  eye  rolls  for  incessant 
novelty.  Never  was  she  earnest  for  anything.  Men's 
minds  with  her  become  tarnished  and  old-fashioned  as 
furniture.  But  the  steams  of  rich  dinners,  the  eye  which 
sparkles  with  the  wines  of  France,  the  luxurious  night 
which  flames  with  more  heat  and  brilliancy  than  God 
has  made  the  day,  this  is  the  world  the  man  of  coterie- 
celebrity  has  chosen ;  and  the  Epicurean,  as  long  as  his 
senses  do  not  cease  to  act,  laughs  at  the  few  who  retire 
to  the  solitary  midnight  lamp.  Posthumous  fame  is — a 
nothing !  Such  men  live  like  unbelievers  in  a  future 
state,  and  their  narrow  calculating  spirit  coldly  dies  in 
their  artificial  world :  but  true  genius  looks  at  a  nobler 
source  of  its  existence ;  it  catches  inspiration  in  its  insu- 
lated studies ;  and  to  the  great  genius,  who  feels  how 
his  present  is  necessarily  connected  with  his  jfuture 
celebrity,  posthumous  fame  is  a  reality,  for  the  sense 
acts  upon  him ! 

The  habitudes  of  genius,  before  genius  looses  its  fresh- 
ness in  this  society,  are  the  mould  in  which  the  character 
is  cast ;  and  these,  in  spite  of  all  the  disguise  of  the  man, 
will  make  him  a  distinct  being  from  the  man  of  society. 
Those  who  have  assumed  the  literary  character  often  for 
purposes  very  distinct  from  literary  ones,  imagine  that 
their  circle  is  the  public  ;  but  in  this  factitious  public  all 
their  interests,  their  opinions,  and  even  their  passions, 
are  temporary,  and  the  admirers  with  the  admired  pass 
away  with  their  season.  "  Is  it  not  sufficient  that  we 
speak  the  same  language,"  says  a  witty  philosopher,  "  but 
we  must  learn  their  dialect ;  we  must  think  as  they 
think,  and  we  must  echo  their  opinions,  as  we  act  by 
imitation,"  Let  the  man  of  genius  then  dread  to  level 
himself  to  the  mediocrity  of  feeling  and  talent  required 
in  such  cu'cles  of  society,  lest  he  become  one  of  them- 
selves ;  he  will  soon  find  that  to  think  like  them  will  in 
time  become  to  act  like  them.  But  he  who  in  solitude 
9 


130  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

adopts  no  transient  feelings,  and  reflects  no  artificial 
lights,  who  is  only  himself,  possesses  an  immense  advan- 
tage :  he  has  not  attached  importance  to  what  is  merely- 
local  and  fugitive,  but  listens  to  interior  truths,  and  fixes 
on  the  immutable  nature  of  things.  He  is  the  man  of 
every  age.  Malebranche  has  observed,  that  "  It  is  not 
indeed  thought  to  be  charitable  to  disturb  common 
opinions,  because  it  is  not  truth  which  unites  society  as 
it  exists  so  much  as  opinion  and  custom :"  a  principle 
which  the  world  would  not,  I  think,  disagree  with ;  but 
which  tends  to  render  folly  wisdom  itself,  and  to  make 
error  immortal. 

Ridicule  is  the  light  scourge  of  society,  and  the  terror 
of  genius.  Ridicule  surrounds  him  with  her  chimer^is, 
which,  like  the  shadowy  monsters  opposing  ^neas,  are 
impalpable  to  his  strokes :  but  remember  when  the  sibyl 
bade  the  hero  proceed  without  noticing  them,  he  found 
these  airy  nothings  as  harmless  as  they  were  unreal. 
The  habits  of  the  literary  character  will,  however,  be 
tried  by  the  men  and  women  of  the  world  by  their  own 
standard :  they  have  no  other ;  the  salt  of  ridicule  gives 
a  poignancy  to  their  deficient  comprehension,  and  their 
perfect  ignorance,  of  the  persons  or  things  which  are  the 
subjects  of  their  ingenious  animadversions.  The  habits 
of  the  literary  character  seem  inevitably  repulsive  to 
persons  of  the  world.  Voltaire,  and  his  companion,  the 
scientific  Madame  De  Chatelet,  she  who  introduced 
Newton  to  the  French  nation,  lived  entirely  devoted  to 
literary  pursuits,  and  their  habits  were  strictly  literary. 
It  happened  once  that  this  learned  pair  dropped  unex- 
pectedly into  a  fashionable  circle  in  the  chdteau  of  a 
French  nobleman.  A  Madame  de  Staiil,  the  7:)er5^^e^<r  in 
office  of  Madame  l)u  Deffand,  has  copiously  narrated 
the  whole  ailUir.  They  arrived  at  midnight  like  two 
famished  spectres,  and  there  was  some  trouble  to  put 
them  to  supper  and  bed.     They  are  called  apparitions, 


VOLTAIRE  A^D   DE  CHATELET.  131 

because  they  were  never  visible  by  day,  only  at  ten  at 
night ;  for  the  one  is  busied  in  describing  great  deeds, 
and  the  other  in  commenting  on  Newton.  Like  other 
apparitions,  they  are  uneasy  companions :  they  will 
neither  play  nor  walk;  they  will  not  dissipate  their 
mornings  with  the  charming  circle  about  them,  nor 
allow  the  charming  circle  to  break  into  their  studies. 
Voltaire  and  Madame  de  Chatelet  would  have  suffered 
the  same  pain  in  being  forced  to  an  abstinence  of  their 
regular  studies,  as  this  circle  of  "  agreables  "  would  have 
at  the  loss  of  their  meals  and  their  airings.  However, 
the  persijleur  declares  they  were  ciphers  "  en  societe," 
adding  no  value  to  the  number,  and  to  which  their 
learned  writings  bear  no  reference. 

But  if  this  literary  couple  would  not  play,  what  was 
worse,  Voltaire  poured  out  a  vehement  declamation 
against  a  fashionable  species  of  gambling,  which  appears 
to  have  made  them  all  stare.  But  Madame  de  Chatelet 
is  the  more  frequent  victim  of  omv persijleur.  The  learned 
lady  would  change  her  apartment — for  it  was  too  noisy, 
and  it  had  smoke  without  fire — which  last  was  her  em- 
blem. "She  is  reviewing  her  Principia ;  an  exercise 
she  repeats  every  year,  without  which  precaution  they 
might  escape  from  her,  and  get  so  far  away  that  she 
might  never  find  them  again.  I  believe  that  her  head  in 
respect  to  them  is  a  house  of  imprisonment  rather  than 
the  place  of  their  birth ;  so  that  she  is  right  to  watch 
them  closely ;  and  she  prefers  the  fresh  air  of  this  occu- 
pation to  our  amusements,  and  persists  in  her  invisibility 
till  night-time.  She  has  six  or  seven  tables  in  her  apart- 
ments, for  she  wants  them  of  all  sizes ;  immense  ones  to 
spread  out  her  papers,  solid  ones  to  hold  her  instruments, 
lighter  ones,  &c.  Yet  with  all  this  she  could  not  escape 
from  the  accident  which  happened  to  Philip  II.,  after 
passing  the  night  in  writing,  when  a  bottle  of  ink  fell 
over  the  despatches ;  but  the  lady  did  not  imitate  the 


135  LITERARY   CFTARAOTlCtt,. 

moderation  of  the  prince ;  indeed,  she  had  not  written  on 
State  affairs,  and  what  was  spoilt  in  her  room  was  algebra, 
much  more  diiBcult  to  copy  out."  Here  is  a  pair  of  por- 
traits of  a  great  poet  and  a  great  mathematician,  whose 
habits  were  discordant  with  the  fashionable  circle  in 
which  they  resided — the  representation  is  just,  for  it  is 
by  one  of  the  coterie  itself 

Study,  meditation,  and  enthusiasm, — this  is  the  progress 
of  genius,  and  th^se  cannot  be  the  habits  of  him  who  lin- 
gers till  he  can  only  live  among  polished  crowds ;  who, 
if  he  bear  about  him  the  consciousness  of  genius,  will  still 
be  acting  under  their  influences.  And  perhaps  there 
never  was  one  of  this  class  of  men  who  had  not  either 
first  entirely  formed  himself  in  solitude,  or  who  amidst 
society  will  not  be  often  breaking  out  to  seek  for  himself. 
Wilkes,  no  longer  touched  by  the  fervours  of  literary 
and  patriotic  glory,  suffered  life  to  melt  away  as  a  do- 
mestic voluptuary;  and  then  it  was  that  he  observed 
with  some  surprise  of  the  great  Earl  of  Chatham,  that  he 
sacrificed  every  pleasure  of  social  life,  even  in  youth,  to 
his  great  pursuit  of  eloquence.  That  ardent  character 
studied  Barrow's  Sermons  so  often  as  to  repeat  them 
from  memory,  and  could  even  read  twice  from  beginning 
to  end  Bailey's  Dictionary ;  these  are  little  facts  which 
belong  only  to  great  minds  !  The  earl  himself  acknowl- 
edged an  artifice  he  practised  in  his  intercourse  with 
society,  for  he  said,  "  when  he  was  young,  he  always 
came  late  into  company,  and  left  it  early."  Vittorio  Al- 
fieri,  and  a  brother-spirit,  our  own  noble  poet,  were  rarely 
seen  amidst  the  brilliant  circle  in  which  they  were  born. 
The  workings  of  their  imagination  were  perpetually 
emancipating  them,  and  one  deep  loneliness  of  feeling 
proudly  insulated  them  among  the  unimpassioned  triflers 
of  their  rank.  They  preserved  unbroken  the  unity  of 
their  character,  in  constantly  escaping  from  the  proces- 


A  LITERARY   MONARCH.  133 

sional  spectacle  of  society.*  It  is  no  trivial  observation 
of  another  noble  writer,  Lord  Shaftesbury,  that  "  it  may 
happen  that  a  person  may  be  so  much  the  worse  author, 
for  beinjTf  the  finer  o-entleman," 

An  extraordinary  instance  of  this  disagreement  be- 
tween the  man  of  the  world  and  the  literary  chai-acter, 
we  find  in  a  philosopher  seated  on  a  throne.  The  cele- 
brated Julian  stained  the  imperial  purple  with  an  author's 
ink ;  and  when  he  resided  among  the  Antiochians,  his 
unalterable  character  shocked  that  volatile  and  luxurious 
race.  He  slighted  the  plaudits  of  their  theatre,  he  ab- 
horred their  dances  and  their  hoi'se-races,  he  was  absti- 
nent even  at  a  festival,  and  incorrupt  himself,  perpetually 
admonished  the  dissipated  citizens  of  their  impious 
abandonment  of  the  laws  of  their  country.  The  Antio- 
chians libelled  their  emperor,  and  petulantly  lampooned 
his  beard,  which  the  philosopher  cai-elessly  wore  neither 
perfumed  nor  curled.  Julian,  scorning  to  inflict  a  sharper 
punishment,  pointed  at  them  his  satire  of  "  the  Misopo- 
gon,  or  the  Antiochian  ;  the  Enemy  of  the  Beard,"  where, 
amidst  irony  and  invective,  the  literary  monarch  bestows 
on  himself  many  exquisite  and  characteristic  touches. 
All  that  the  persons  of  fashion  alleged  against  the  literary 
character,  Julian  unreservedly  confesses — his  undressed 
beard  and  awkwardness,  his  obstinacy,  his  unsociable 
habits,  his  deficient  tastes,  while  at  the  same  time  he 
represents  his  good  qualities  as  so  many  extravagances. 
But,  in  this  Cervantic  pleasantry  of  self-reprehension,  the 
imperial  philosopher  has  not  failed  to  show  this  light 
and  corrupt  people  that  the  reason  he  could  not  possibly 

*  In  a  note  which  Lord  Byron  has  written  in  a  copy  of  this  work 
his  lordship  says,  "  I  fear  this  was  not  the  case ;  I  have  been  but  too 
myh.  in  that  circle,  especially  in  1812-13-14." 

To  the  expression  of  "  one  deep  loneliness  oi  leeling,"  his  lordship 
has  marked  in  the  margin  "True."  I  am  gratified  to  confirm  the 
theory  of  my  ideas  of  the  man  of  genius,  by  the  practical  experience 
of  the  greatest  of  our  age. 


134  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

resemLle  thorn,  existed  in  the  unhappy  circumstance  of 
having  been  subject  to  too  strict  an  education  under  a 
family  tutor,  who  had  never  sutfered  him  to  swerve  from 
the  one  right  way,  and  who  (additional  misfortune !)  had 
inspired  him  with  such  a  silly  reverence  for  Plato  and 
Socrates,  Aristotle  and  Theophrastus,  that  he  had  been 
induced  to  make  them  his  models.  "  Whatever  manners," 
says  the  emperor,  "I  may  have  previously  contracted, 
whether  gentle  or  boorish,  it  is  impossible  for  me  now  to 
alter  or  unlearn.  Habit  is  said  to  be  a  second  nature ; 
to  oppose  it  is  irksome,  but  to  counteract  the  study  of 
more  than  thirty  years  is  extremely  difficult,  especially 
when  it  has  been  imbibed  with  so  much  attention." 

And  what  if  men  of  genius,  relinquishing  their  habits, 
could  do  this  violence  to  their  nature,  should  we  not 
lose  the  original  for  a  factitious  genius,  and  spoil  one 
race  without  improving  the  other  ?  If  nature  and  habit, 
that  second  nature  which  prevails  even  over  the  first, 
have  created  two  beings  distinctly  different,  what  mode 
of  existence  shall  ever  assimilate  them  ?  Antipathies 
and  sympathies,  those  still  occult  causes,  however  con- 
cealed, will  break  forth  at  an  unguarded  moment.  Clip 
the  wings  of  an  eagle  that  he  may  roost  among  domestic 
fowls, — at  some  unforeseen  moment  his  i^inions  will  over- 
shadow and  terrify  his  tiny  associates,  for  "the  feathered 
king  "  will  be  still  musing  on  the  rock  and  the  cloud. 

The  man  of  genius  will  be  restive  even  in  his  tram- 
melled paces.  Too  impatient  amidst  the  heartless  cour- 
tesies of  society,  and  little  practised  in  the  minuter 
attentions,  he  has  rarely  sacrificed  to  the  unlaughing 
graces  of  Lord  Chesterfield.  Plato  ingeniously  compares 
Socrates  to  the  gallipots  of  the  Athenian  apothecaries; 
the  grotesque  figures  of  owls  and  apes  were  painted  on 
their  exterior,  but  they  contained  within  precious  balsams. 
The  man  of  genius  amidst  many  a  circle  may  exclaim 
with  Themistocles,  "  I  cannot  fiddle,  but  I  can  make  a 


A  LITERARY   MONARCH.  135 

little  village  a  great  city;"  and  with  Corneille,  he  may 
be  allowed  to  smile  at  his  own  deficiencies,  and  even 
disdain  to  please  in  certain  conventional  manners,  assert- 
ing that  "  wanting  all  these  things,  he  was  not  the  less 
Corneille." 

But  with  the  great  thinkers  and  students,  their  char- 
acter is  still  more  obdurate.  Adam  Smith  could  never 
free  himself  from  the  embarrassed  manners  of  a  recluse  ; 
he  was  often  absent,  and  his  grave  and  formal  conver- 
sation made  him  seem  distant  and  reserved,  when  in  fact 
no  man  had  warmer  feelings  for  his  intimates.  One  who 
kuew  Sir  Isaac  Newton  tells  us,  that  "  he  would  some- 
times be  silent  and  thoughtful,  and  look  all  the  while 
as  if  he  were  saying  his  prayers."  A  French  princess, 
desirous  of  seeing  the  great  moralist  Xicolle,  experienced 
an  inconceivable  disappointment  when  the  moral  in- 
structor, entering  with  the  most  perplexing  bow  imagin- 
able, silently  sank  into  his  chair.  The  interview  pro- 
moted no  conversation,  and  the  retu-ed  student,  whose 
elevated  spirit  might  have  endured  martyrdom,  shrunk 
with  timidity  in  the  unaccustomed  honour  of  conversing 
with  a  princess  and  having  nothing  to  say.  Observe 
Hume  thrown  into  a  most  ridiculous  attitude  by  a  woman 
of  talents  and  coterie  celebrity.  Our  philosopher  was 
called  on  to  perform  his  part  in  one  of  those  inventions 
of  the  hour  to  which  the  fashionable,  like  children  in 
society,  have  sometimes  resorted  to  attract  their  world 
by  the  rimiour  of  some  new  extravagance.  In  the  pr(!S- 
ent,  poor  Hume  was  to  represent  a  sultan  on  a  sofa, 
sitting  between  two  slaves,  who  were  the  prettiest  and 
most  vivacious  of  Parisians.  Much  was  anticipated  from 
this  literary  exhibition.  The  two  slaves  were  ready  at 
repartee,  but  the  utter  simpUcity  of  the  sultan  displayed 
a  blockishness  which  blunted  all  edge.  The  phlegmatic 
metaphysician  and  historian  only  gave  a  s",gn  of  life  by 
repeating  the  same  awkward  gesture,  and  the  same  ridi- 


136  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

culous  exclamation,  without  end.  One  of  the  fair  slaves 
soon  discovered  the  unchangeable  nature  of  the  forlorn 
philosopher,  impatiently  exclaiming,  "  I  guessed  as  much, 
never  was  there  such  a  calf  of  a  man !" — "  Since  this 
affair,"  adds  Madame  d'Epinay,  "  Hume  is  at  present 
banished  to  the  class  of  spectators."  The  philosopher, 
indeed,  had  formed  a  more  correct  conception  of  his 
own  character  than  the  volatile  sylphs  of  the  Parisian 
circle,  for  in  writing  to  the  Countess  de  Boufflers,  on  an 
invitation  to  Paris,  he  said,  "  I  have  rusted  on  amid 
books  and  study  ;  have  been  little  engaged  in  the  active, 
and  not  much  in  the  pleasui'able,  scenes  of  life ;  and  am 
more  accustomed  to  a  select  society  than  to  general 
companies."  If  Hume  made  a  ridiculous  figure  in  these 
cii*cles,  the  error  did  not  lie  on  the  side  of  that  cheerful 
and  profound  philosopher. — This  subject  leads  our  inqui-  ■ 
ries  to  the  nature  of  the  conversations  of  men  of 
genius. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

Conversations  of  men  of  genius. — Their  deficient  agreeableness  may 
result  from  qualities  which  conduce  to  their  greatness. — Slow-minded 
men  not  the  dullest. — The  conversationists  not  the  ablest  writers. — 
Their  true  excellence  in  conversation  consists  of  associations  with 
their  pursuits. 

IN  conversation  the  sublime  Dante  was  taciturn  or 
satirical ;  Butler  sullen  or  caustic ;  Gray  and  Alfieri 
seldom  talked  or  smiled  ;  Descartes,  whose  habits  had 
formed  him  for  solitude  and  meditation,  was  silent ;  Rous- 
seau was  remarkably  trite  in  conversation,  not  an  idea,  not 
a  word  of  fancy  or  eloquence  warmed  him ;  Addison  and 
Moliere  in  society  were  only  observers ;  and  Dryden  has 
very  honestly  told  us,  "  My  conversation  is  slow  and  dull, 


CONVERSATIONAL   POWER.  137 

my  humour  saturnine  and  reserved  ;  in  short,  I  am  none 
of  those  who  endeavour  to  break  jests  in  company,  or 
make  repartees."  Pope  had  lived  among  "the  great," 
not  only  in  rank  but  in  intellect,  the  most  delightful  con- 
versationists ;  but  the  poet  felt  that  he  could  not  contri- 
bute to  these  seductive  pleasures,  and  at  last  confessed 
that  he  could  amuse  and  instruct  himself  much  more  by 
another  means :  "  As  much  company  as  I  have  kept,  and 
as  much  as  I  love  it,  I  love  reading  better,  and  would 
rather  be  employed  in  reading,  than  in  the  most  agree- 
able conversation."  Pope's  conversation,  as  preserved 
by  Spence,  was  sensible ;  and  it  would  seem  that  he  had 
never  said  but  one  witty  thing  in  his  whole  life,  for  only 
one  has  been  recorded.  It  was  ingeniovxsly  said  of 
Vaucanson,  that  he  was  as  much  an  automaton  as  any 
which  he  made.  Hogarth  and  Swift,  who  looked  on  the 
circles  of  society  with  eyes  of  inspiration,  were  absent  in 
company  ;  but  their  grossness  and  asperity  did  not  pre- 
vent the  one  from  being  the  greatest  of  comic  painters, 
nor  the  other  as  much  a  creator  of  manners  in  his  way. 
Genius,  even  in  society,  is  pursuing  its  own  operations, 
and  it  would  cease  to  be  itself  were  it  always  to  act  like 
others. 

Men  of  genius  who  are  habitually  eloquent,  who  have 
practised  conversation  as  an  art,  for  some  even  sacrifice 
their  higher  pursuits  to  this  perishable  art  of  acting,  have 
indeed  excelled,  and  in  the  most  opposite  manner.  Home 
Tooke  finely  discriminates  the  wit  in  conversation  of 
Sheridan  and  Curran,  after  having  passed  an  evening  in 
their  company.  "  Sheridan's  wit  was  like  steel  highly 
polished  and  sharpened  for  display  and  use ;  Curran's 
was  a  mine  of  virgin  gold,  incessantly  crumbling  away 
from  its  own  richness."  Charles  Butler,  whose  reminis- 
cences of  his  illustrious  contemporaries  are  derived  from 
personal  intercourse,  has  correctly  described  the  familiar 
conversations  of  Pitt,  Fox,  and  Burke  :  "  The  most  intl 


138  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

mate  friends  of  Mr.  Fox  complained  of  his  too  frequent 
ruminating  silence.  Mr.  Pitt  talked,  and  his  talk  was 
fascinating.  Mr.  Burke's  conversation  was  rambling,  but 
splendid  and  instructive  beyond  comparison."  Let  me 
add,  that  the  finest  genius  of  our  times,  is  also  the  most 
delightful  man;  he  is  that  rarest  among  the  rare  of 
human  beings,  whom  to  have  known  is  nearly  to  adore  ; 
wh©m  to  have  seen,  to  have  heard,  forms  an  era  in  our 
life  ;  whom  youth  remembers  with  enthusiasm,  and  whose 
presence  the  men  and  women  of  "  the  world  "  feel  like  a 
dream  from  which  they  would  not  awaken.  His  bonhomie 
attaches  our  hearts  to  him  by  its  simplicity ;  his  legen- 
dary conversation  makes  us,  for  a  moment,  poets  like 
himself* 

But  that  deficient  agreeableness  in  social  life  with 
which  men  of  genius  have  been  often  reproached,  may 
really  result  from  the  nature  of  those  qualities  which 
conduce  to  the  greatness  of  their  public  character.  A 
thinker  whose  mind  is  saturated  with  knowledge  on  a 
particular  subject,  will  be  apt  to  deliver  himself  authori- 
tatively ;  but  he  will  then  pass  for  a  dogmatist :  should 
he  hesitate,  that  he  may  correct  an  equivocal  expression, 
or  bring  nearer  a  remote  idea,  he  is  in  danger  of  sinking 
into  pedantry  or  rising  into  genius.  Even  the  fulness  of 
knowledge  has  its  tediousness.  "  It  is  rare,"  said  Male 
branche,  "  that  those  who  meditate  profoundly,  can  ex- 
plain well  the  objects  they  have  meditated  on  ;  for  they 
hesitate  when  they  have  to  speak ;  they  are  scrupulous 
to  convey  false  ideas  or  use  inaccurate  terms.  They  do 
not  choose  to  speak,  like  others,  merely  for  the  sake  of 
talking."  A  vivid  and  sudden  perception  of  truth,  or  a 
Bevere  scrutiny  after  it,  may  elevate  the  voice,  and  burst 

*  This  was  written  under  tlio  inspiration  of  a  night's  conversation, 
)r  rather  listening  to  Sir  Walter  Scott. — I  cannot  bring  myself  to 
»rase  what  now,  alas  1  has  closed  in  the  silence  of  a  swift  termination 
of  his  glorious  existence. 


CONVERSATIONAL   POWER.  139 

with,  an  irruptive  heat  on  the  subdued  tone  of  conversa- 
tion. These  men  are  too  much  in  earnest  for  the  weak 
or  the  vain.  Such  seriousness  kills  their  feeble  animal 
spirits.  Smeaton,  a  creative  genius  of  his  class,  had  a 
warmth  of  expression  which  seemed  repulsive  to  many  : 
it  arose  from  an  intense  application  of  mind,  which  im- 
pelled him  to  break  out  hastily  when  anything  was  said 
that  did  not  accord  with  his  ideas.  Pei-sons  who  are  ob- 
stinate till  they  can  give  up  their  notions  with  a  safe  con- 
science, are  troublesome  intimates.  Often  too  the  cold 
tardiness  of  decision  is  only  the  strict  balancing  of  scep- 
ticism or  candour,  while  obscurity  as  frequently  may  arise 
from  the  deficiency  of  previous  knowledge  in  the  listenei-. 
It  was  said  that  N'ewton  in  conversation  did  not  seem  to 
understand  his  own  wi'itings,  and  it  was  supposed  that 
his  memory  had  decayed.  The  fact,  however,  was  not 
so ;  and  Pemberton  makes  a  curious  distinction,  which 
accounts  for  Newton  noi  always  being  ready  to  speah  on 
subjects  of  which  he  was  the  sole  master.  "  Inventors 
seem  to  treasure  up  in  their  own  minds  what  they  have 
found  out,  after  another  manner  than  those  do  the  same 
things  that  have  not  this  inventive  faculty.  The  former, 
when  they  have  occasion  to  produce  their  knowledge,  in 
some  means  are  obliged  immediately  to  investigate  part 
of  what  they  want.  For  this  they  are  not  equally  fit  at 
all  times ;  and  thus  it  has  often  happened,  that  such  as 
retain  things  chiefly  by  means  of  a  very  strong  memory, 
have  appeared  off-hand  more  expert  than  the  discoverers 
themselves." 

A  peculiar  characteristic  in  the  conversations  of  men 
of  genius,  which  has  often  injured  them  when  the  listen- 
ers were  not  intimately  acquainted  with  the  men,  are 
those  sports  of  a  vacant  mind,  those  sudden  impulses  to 
throw  out  paradoxical  opinions,  and  to  take  unexpected 
views  of  things  in  some  humour  of  the  moment.  These 
fanciful  and  capricious  ideas  are  the  grotesque  images  of 


140  nTERART  CHARACTER. 

a  pla^  ill  miu<l,  and  are  at  least  as  frequently  misrepre- 
sented ai4  vbey  are  misunderstood.  But  thus  the  cunning 
Philistmes  are  enabled  to  triumph  over  the  strong  and 
gifted  man,  because  in  the  hour  of  confidence,  and  in  the 
abandonment  of  the  mind,  he  had  laid  his  head  in  the  lap 
of  wantonness,  and  taught  them  how  he  might  be  shorn 
of  his  strength.  Dr.  Johnson  appears  often  to  have  in- 
dulged this  amusement,  both  in  good  and  ill  humour. 
Even  such  a  calm  philosopher  as  Adam  Smith,  as  well  as 
such  a  child  of  imagination  as  Burns,  were  remarked  for 
this  ordinary  habit  of  men  of  genius  ;  which,  perhaps,  as 
often  originates  in  a  gentle  feeling  of  contempt  for  their 
auditors,  as  from  any  other  cause.  Many  years  after 
having  written  the  above,  I  discovered  two  recent  confes- 
sions which  confirm  the  principle,  A  literary  character,  the 
late  Dr.  Leyden,  acknowledged,  that  "  in  conversation  I 
often  verge  so  nearly  on  absurdity,  that  I  know  it  is  per- 
fectly easy  to  misconceive  me,  as  well  as  to  misrepresent 
me."  And  Miss  Edgeworth,  in  describing  her  father's 
conversation,  observes  that,  "  his  openness  went  too  far, 
almost  to  imprudence  ;  exposing  him  not  only  to  be  mis- 
represented, but  to  be  misunderstood.  Those  who  did 
not  know  him  intimately,  often  took  literally  what  was 
either  said  in  sport,  or  spoken  with  the  intention  of 
making  a  strong  impression  for  some  good  purpose." 
Cumberland,  whose  conversation  was  delightful,  hap- 
pily describes  the  species  I  have  noticed.  "  Nonsense 
talked  by  men  of  wit  and  understanding  in  the  hour 
of  relaxation  is  of  the  very  finest  essence  of  convivi- 
ality, and  a  treat  delicious  to  those  who  have  the  sense 
to  comprehend  it ;  but  it  implies  a  trust  in  the  company 
not  always  to  be  risked."  The  truth  is,  that  many, 
eminent  for  their  genius,  have  been  remarkable  in  society 
for  a  simplicity  and  playfulness  almost  infantine.  Such 
was  tlic  gaiety  of  llumc,  such  the  honhoniie  of  Fox;  and 
owe.  who  liad  long  lived  in  a  circle  of  men  of  genius  in 


SIMPLICITT   OF   GENTOS.  141 

the  last  age,  was  disposed  to  consider  this  iufai\Mue  siin- 
plicity  as  characteristic  of  genius.  It  is  a  solitary  g^  .^co, 
which  can  never  lend  its  charm  to  a  man  of  the  w*  'Id, 
whose  purity  of  mind  has  long  been  lost  in  a  hack*  'e<^i 
intercourse  with  everything  exterior  to  himself. 

But  above  all,  what  most  offends,  is  that  freedom  o^ 
opinion  which  a  man  of  genius  can  no  more  divest  hiin 
self  of,  than  of  the  features  of  his  face.  But  what  if  thi- 
intractable  obstinacy  be  only  resistance  of  character 
Burns  never  could  account  to  himself  why,  "  thougl 
when  he  had  a  mind  he  was  pretty  generally  beloved,  h( 
could  never  get  the  art  of  commanding  respect,"  and 
imagined  it  was  owing  to  his  deficiency  in  what  Sterne 
calls  "  that  understraj)ping  virtue  of  discretion ;"  "  I  am 
so  apt  to  a  lapsus  linguae,^''  says  this  honest  sinner. 
Amidst  the  stupidity  of  a  formal  circle,  and  the  inanity 
of  triflers,  however  such  men  may  conceal  their  impatience, 
one  of  them  has  forcibly  described  the  reaction  of  this 
suppressed  feeling :  "  The  force  with  which  it  burst  out 
when  the  pressure  was  taken  off,  gave  the  measure  of  the 
constraint  which  had  been  endured."  Erasmus,  that 
learned  and  charming  writer,  who  was  blessed  with  the 
genius  which  could  enliven  a  folio,  has  well  described 
himself,  sum  naturd  propensior  ad  jocos  quam  fortasse 
deceat : — more  constitutionally  inclined  to  pleasantry  than, 
as  he  is  pleased  to  add,  perhaps  became  him.  We  know 
in  his  intimacy  with  Sir  Thomas  More,  that  Erasmus  was 
a  most  exhilarating  companion ;  yet  in  his  intercourse 
with  the  great  he  was  not  fortunate.  At  the  first  glance 
he  saw  through  affectation  and  parade,  his  praise  of  folly 
was  too  ironical,  and  his  freedom  carried  with  it  no  pleas- 
antry for  those  who  knew  not  to  prize  a  laughing  sage. 

In  conversation  the  operations  of  the  intellect  with 
some  ax-e  habitually  slow,  but  there  will  be  found  no  dif- 
ference between  the  result  of  their  perceptions  and  those 
of  a  quicker  nature ;  and  hence  it  is  that  slow-minded  men 


142  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

are  not,  as  men  of  the  world  imagine,  always  the  dullest. 
Nicolle  said  of  a  scintillant  wit,  "  He  vanquishes  me  in 
the  drawing-room,  but  surrenders  to  me  at  discretion  on 
the  stairs."  Many  a  great  wit  has  thought  the  wit  it  was 
too  late  to  speak,  and  many  a  great  reasoner  has  only 
reasoned  when  his  opponent  has  disappeared.  Conversa- 
tion with  such  men  is  a  losing  game ;  and  it  is  often  la- 
mentable to  observe  how  men  of  genius  are  reduced  to  a 
state  of  helplessness  from  not  commanding  their  attention, 
while  inferior  intellects  habitually  are  found  to  possess 
what  is  called  "  a  ready  mind."  For  this  reason  some, 
as  it  were  in  despair,  have  shut  themselves  up  in  silence. 
A  lively  Frenchman,  in  describing  the  distinct  sorts  of 
conversation  of  his  literary  friends,  among  whom  was  Dr. 
Franklin,  energetically  hits  oif  that  close  observer  and 
thinker,  wary,  even  in  society,  by  noting  down  "  the 
silence  of  the  celebrated  Franklin."  We  learn  from 
Cumberland  that  Lord  Mansfield  did  not  promote  that 
conversation  which  gave  him  any  pains  to  carry  on.  He 
resorted  to  society  for  simple  relaxation,  and  could  even 
find  a  pleasure  in  dulness  when  accompanied  with  pla- 
cidity. "  It  was  a  kind  of  cushion  to  his  understanding," 
observes  the  wit.  Chaucer,  like  La  Fontaine,  was  more 
facetious  in  his  tales  than  in  his  conversation ;  for  the 
Countess  of  Pembroke  used  to  rally  him,  observing  that 
his  silence  was  more  agreeable  to  her  than  his  talk. 
Tasso's  conversation,  which  his  friend  Manso  has  attempt- 
ed to  preserve  for  us,  was  not  agreeable.  In  company 
he  sat  absorbed  in  thought,  with  a  melancholy  air ;  and 
it  was  on  one  of  these  occasions  that  a  person  present  ob- 
serving that  this  conduct  was  indicative  of  madness,  that 
Tasso,  who  had  heard  him,  looking  on  him  without  emo- 
tion, asked  whether  he  was  ever  acquainted  with  a  mad- 
man who  knew  when  to  hold  his  tongue  !  Malebranche 
tells  us  that  one  of  these  mere  men  of  learning,  who  can 
only  venture  to  praise  antiquity,  once  said,  "  I  have  seen 


CONTRADICTORY   CHARACTER.  143 

Descartes ;  I  knew  him,  and  frequently  have  conversed 
with  him  ;  he  was  a  good  sort  of  man,  and  was  not  want- 
ins;  in  sense,  but  he  had  nothing  extraordinary  in  him." 
Had  Aristotle  spoken  French  instead  of  Greek,  and  had 
this  man  frequently  conversed  with  him,  unquestionably 
he  would  not  have  discovered,  even  in  this  idol  of  anti- 
quity, anything  extraordinary.  Two  thousand  years 
would  have  been  wanting  for  our  learned  critic's  percep- 
tions. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  conversationists  have  rarely 
proved  to  be  the  abler  winters.  He  whose  fancy  is  sus- 
ceptible of  excitement  in  the  presence  of  his  auditors, 
making  the  minds  of  men  run  with  his  own,  seizing  on 
the  first  impressions,  and  touching  the  shadows  and  out- 
lines of  things — with  a  memory  where  all  lies  ready  at 
hand,  quickened  by  habitual  associations,  and  varying 
with  all  those  extemporary  changes  and  fugitive  colours 
which  melt  away  in  the  rainbow  of  conversation  ;  with 
that  wit,  which  is  only  wit  in  one  place,  and  for  a  time ; 
w^th  that  vivacity  of  animal  spirits  which  often  exists 
separately  from  the  more  retired  intellectual  powers — 
this  man  can  strike  out  wit  by  habit,  and  pour  forth  a 
stream  of  phrase  which  has  sometimes  been  imagined  to 
require  only  to  be  written  down  to  be  read  with  the  same 
delight  with  which  it  was  heard ;  but  he  cannot  print  his 
tone,  nor  his  air  and  manner,  nor  the  contagion  of  his 
hardihood.  All  the  while  we  were  not  sensible  of  the 
flutter  of  his  ideas,  the  incoherence  of  his  transitions,  his 
vague  notions,  his  doubtful  assertions,  and  his  meagre 
knowledge.     A  pen  is  the  extinguisher  of  this  luminary. 

A  curious  contrast  occurred  between  Buffon  and  his 
friend  Montbelliard,  who  was  associated  in  his  great  work. 
The  one  possessed  the  reverse  qualities  of  the  other: 
BufFon,  whose  style  in  his  composition  is  elaborate  and 
declamatory,  was  in  conversation  coarse  and  careless. 
Pleading  that  conversation  with  him  was  only  a  relaxa- 


144  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

tion,  he  rather  sought  than  avoided  the  idiom  and  slang 
of  the  mob,  when  these  seemed  expressive  and  facetious ; 
while  Montbelliard  threw  every  charm  of  animation  over 
his  delightful  talk :  but  when  he  took  his  seat  at  the  rival 
desk  of  BufFon,  an  immense  interval  separated  them ;  he 
whose  tongue  dropped  the  honey  and  the  music  of  the 
bee,  handled  a  pen  of  iron ;  while  Buffon's  was  the  soft 
pencil  of  the  philosophical  painter  of  nature.  Cowley  and 
Killegrew  furnish  another  instance.  Cowley  was  embar- 
rassed in  conversation,  and  had  no  quickness  in  argument 
or  reply:  a  mind  pensive  and  elegant  could  not  be  struck 
at  to  catch  fire :  while  with  Killegrew  the  sparkling  bub- 
bles of  his  fancy  rose  and  dropped.*  When  the  delight- 
ful conversationist  wrote,  the  deception  ceased.  Denham, 
who  knew  them  both,  hit  off  the  difference  between  them  • 

Had  Cowley  ne'er  spoke,  Killegrew  ne'er  writ, 
Combined  in  one  they  had  made  a  matchless  wit. 

Not,  however,  that  a  man  of  genius  does  not  throw  out 
many  things  in  conversation  which  have  only  been  found 
admirable  when  the  public  possessed  them.  The  public 
often  widely  differ  from  the  individual,  and  a  century's 
opinion  may  intervene  between  them.  The  fate  of  genius 
is  sometimes  that  of  the  Athenian  sculptor,  who  submit- 
ted his  colossal  Minerva  to  a  private  party  for  inspection. 
Before  the  artist  they  trembled  for  his  daring  chisel,  and 
the  man  of  genius  smiled  ;  behind  him  they  calumniated, 
and  the  man  of  genius  forgave.  Once  fixed  in  a  public 
place,  in  the  eyes  of  the  whole  city,  the  statue  was  the 

*  Killegrew's  eight  plays,  upon  wblcli  his  character  as  an  autlior  rests, 
have  not  been  republished  with  one  exception — theParson'n  Wedding — 
which  is  given  in  Dodsley's  collection;  and  which  is  sufficient  to  sat- 
isfy curiosity.  He  was  a  favourite  with  Charles  the  Second,  and  had 
great  influence  with  him.  Some  of  his  witty  court  jests  are  preserved, 
but  are  too  much  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  ago  to  be  quoted  here. 
Ho  was  sometimes  useful  by  devoting  his  satiric  sallies  to  urge  the  king 
to  his  duties. — Ed. 


CONTRADICTORY   CHARACTER.  I45 

Divinity !  Tliere  is  a  certain  distance  at  whicli  opinions, 
as  well  as  statues,  must  be  viewed. 

But  enough  of  those  defects  of  men  of  genius  which 
often  attend  their  conversations.  Must  we  then  boAV  to 
authorial  dignity,  and  kiss  hands,  because  they  are  inked  ? 
Must  we  bend  to  the  artist,  who  considers  us  as  nothing 
unless  we  are  canvas  or  marble  under  his  hands  ?  Are 
there  not  men  of  genius  the  grace  of  society  and  the 
charm  of  their  circle  ?  Fortunate  men  !  more  blest  than 
their  brothers ;  but  for  this,  they  are  not  the  more  men 
of  genius,  nor  the  others  less.  To  how  many  of  the  ordi- 
nary intimates  of  a  superior  genius  who  complain  of  his 
defects  might  one  say,  "  Do  his  productions  not  delight 
and  sometimes  surprise  you  ? — You  are  silent !  I  beg 
your  pardon;  the  public  has  informed  you  of  a  great 
name ;  you  would  not  otherwise  have  perceived  the  pre- 
cious talent  of  your  neighbour :  you  know  little  of  your 
friend  but  his  name."  The  personal  familiarity  of  ordinary 
minds  with  a  man  of  genius  has  often  produced  a  ludi- 
crous prejudice.  A  Scotchman,  to  whom  the  name  of  a 
Dr.  Robertson  had  travelled  down,  was  curious  to  know 
who  he  was. — "  Your  neighbour !" — But  he  could  not  per- 
suade himself  that  the  man  whom  he  conversed  with  was 
the  great  historian  of  his  country.  Even  a  good  man 
could  not  beheve  in  the  announcement  of  the  Messiah, 
from  the  same  sort  of  prejudice :  "  Can  there  anything 
good  come  out  of  Nazareth  ?" 

Suffer  a  man  of  genius  to  be  such  as  nature  and  habit 
have  formed  him,  and  he  will  then  be  the  most  interest- 
ing companion ;  then  will  you  see  nothing  but  his  char- 
acter. Akenside,  in  conversation  with  select  friends,  often 
touched  by  a  romantic  enthusiasm,  would  pass  in  review 
those  eminent  ancients  whom  he  loved ;  he  imbued  with 
his  poetic  faculty  even  the  details  of  their  lives;  and 
seemed  another  Plato  while  he  poured  libations  to  their 
memory  in  the  language  of  Plato,  among  those  whose 
10 


146 


LITERARY   CHARACTER. 


studies  and  feeling  were  congenial  with  his  own.  Rom- 
ney,  with  a  fancy  entirely  his  own,  would  give  vent  to 
his  effusions,  uttered  in  a  hurried  accent  and  elevated 
tone,  and  often  accompanied  by  tears,  to  which  by  con- 
stitution he  was  prone ;  thus  Cumberland,  from  personal 
intimacy,  describes  the  conversation  of  tliis  man  of  genius. 
Even  the  temperate  sensibility  of  Hume  was  touched  by 
the  bursts  of  feeling  of  Rousseau  ;  who,  he  says, "  in  con- 
versation kindles  often  to  a  degree  of  heat  which  looks 
like  inspiration."  Barry,  that  unhappy  genius  !  was  the 
most  repulsive  of  men  in  his  exterior.  The  vehemence 
of  his  language,  the  wildness  of  his  glance,  his  habit  of 
introducing  vulgar  oaths,  which,  by  some  unlucky  associ- 
ation of  habit,  served  him  as  expletives  and  interjections, 
communicated  even  a  horror  to  some.  A  pious  and  a 
learned  lady,  who  had  felt  intolerable  uneasiness  in  his 
presence,  did  not,  however,  leave  this  man  of  genius  that 
very  evening  without  an  impression  that  she  had  never 
heard  so  divine  a  man  in  her  life.  The  conversation  hap- 
pening to  turn  on  that  principle  of  benevolence  which 
pervades  Christianity,  and  on  the  meekness  of  the  Founder, 
it  gave  Barry  an  opportunity  of  opening  on  the  character 
of  Jesus  with  that  copiousness  of  heart  and  mind  which, 
once  heard,  could  never  be  forgotten.  That  artist  indeed 
had  long  in  his  meditations  an  ideal  head  of  Christ,  which 
he  was  always  talking  of  executing :  "  It  is  here !"  he 
would  cry,  striking  his  head.  That  which  baffled  the  in- 
vention, as  we  are  told,  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  M'ho  left 
his  Christ  headless,  having  exhausted  his  creative  faculty 
among  the  apostles,  this  imaginative  picture  of  the  myste- 
rious union  of  a  divine  and  human  nature,  never  ceased, 
even  when  conversing,  to  haunt  the  reveries  of  Barry. 

There  are  few  authors  and  artists  who  are  not  eloquent- 
ly instructive  on  that  class  of  knowledge  or  that  depart- 
ment of  art  which  reveals  the  mastery  of  their  life.  Their 
conversations  of  this  nature  affect  the  mind  to  a  distant 


ELOQUENCE   OF  BARRY.  147 

period  of  life.  Who,  having  listened  to  such,  has  forgotten 
what  a  man  of  genius  has  said  at  such  moments  ?  Who 
dwells  not  on  the  single  thought  or  the  glowing  expres- 
sion, stamped  in  the  heat  of  the  moment,  which  came 
from  its  source  ?  Then  the  mind  of  genius  lises  as  the 
melody  of  the  .^olian  harp,  when  the  winds  suddenly 
sweep  over  the  strings — it  comes  and  goes — and  leaves 
a  sweetness  beyond  the  harmonies  of  art. 

The  Miscellanea  of  Politian  are  not  only  the  result  of 
his  studies  in  the  rich  library  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  but 
of  conversations  which  had  passed  in  those  rides  which 
Lorenzo,  accompanied  by  Politian,  preferred  to  the  pomp 
of  cavalcades.  When  the  Cardinal  de  Cabassolle  strayed 
with  Petrarch  about  his  valley  in  many  a  wandering  dis- 
course, they  sometimes  extended  their  walks  to  such  a 
distance,  that  the  servant  sought  them  in  vain  to  an- 
nounce the  dinner-hour,  and  found  them  returning  in  the 
evening.  When  Helvetius  enjoyed  the  social  conversa- 
tion of  a  literary  friend,  he  described  it  as  "  a  chase  of 
ideas."  Such  are  the  literary  conversations  which  Home 
Tooke  alluded  to,  when  he  said  "  I  assure  you,  we  find 
more  difficulty  to  finish  than  to  begin  our  conversations." 

The  natural  and  congenial  conversations  of  men  of  let- 
ters and  of  artists  must  then  be  those  which  are  associ- 
ated with  their  pursuits,  and  these  are  of  a  different  com- 
plexion with  the  talk  of  men  of  the  world,  the  objects  of 
which  are  drawn  from  the  temporary  passions  of  party- 
men,  or  the  variable  on  dits  of  triflers — topics  studiously 
rejected  from  these  more  tranquilising  conversations. 
Diamonds  can  only  be  polished  by  their  own  dust,  and 
are  only  shaped  by  the  friction  of  other  diamonds ;  and 
so  it  happens  with  literary  men  and  artists. 

A  meeting  of  this  nature  has  been  recorded  by  Cicero, 
which  himself  and  Atticus  had  with  Varro  in  the  coun- 
try. Varro  arriving  from  Rome  in  their  neighbourhood 
somewhat  fatigued,  had  sent  a  messeaager  to  his  friends. 


148 


LITERARY   CHARACTER. 


"As  soon  as  we  had  heard  these  tidings,"  says  Cicero, 
"we  could  not  delay  hastening  to  see  one  who  was 
attached  to  us  by  the  same  pursuits  and  by  former 
friendship."  They  set  off,  but  found  Varro  half  way, 
urged  by  the  same  eager  desire  to  join  them.  They  con- 
ducted him  to  Cicero's  villa.  Here,  while  Cicero  was  in- 
quiring after  the  news  of  Rome,  Atticus  interrupted  the 
political  rival  of  Cresar,  observing,  "  Let  us  leave  off  in- 
quiring after  things  which  cannot  be  heard  without  pain. 
Rather  ask  about  what  we  know,  for  Varro's  muses  are 
longer  silent  than  they  used  to  be,  yet  surely  he  has  not 
forsaken  them,  but  rather  conceals  what  he  wiites." — 
"  By  no  means !"  replied  Varro,  "  for  I  deem  him  to  be  a 
whimsical  man  to  write  what  he  wishes  to  suppress.  I 
have  indeed  a  great  work  in  hand  (on  the  Latin  lan- 
guage), long  designed  for  Cicero."  The  conversation 
then  took  its  natural  turn  by  Atticus  having  got  rid  of 
the  political  anxiety  of  Cicero.  Such,  too,  were  the  con- 
versations which  passed  at  the  literary  residence  of  the 
Medici  family,  which  was  described,  with  as  much  truth 
as  fancy,  as  "  the  Lyceum  of  philosophy,  the  Arcadia  of 
poets,  and  the  Academy  of  painters."  We  have  a  pleas- 
ing instance  of  such  a  meeting  of  literary  friends  in  those 
conversations  which  passed  in  Pope's  garden,  where  there 
was  often  a  remarkable  union  of  nobility  and  literary 
men.  There  Thomson,  Mallet,  Gay,  Hooke,  and  Glover 
met  Cobham,  Bathurst,  Chesterfield,  Lyttleton,  and  other 
lords ;  there  some  of  those  poets  found  patrons,  and  Pope 
himself  discovered  critics.  The  contracted  views  of  Spence 
have  unfortunately  not  preserved  those  literary  conver- 
sations, but  a  curious  passage  has  dropped  from  the  pen 
of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  in  what  his  lordship  calls  "  a  letter 
to  Pope,"  often  probably  passed  over  among  his  political 
tracts.  It  breathes  the  spirit  of  those  delightful  conver- 
sations. "  My  thoughts,"  wi'ites  his  lordship,  "  in  what 
order  soever  they  flow,  shall  be  communicated  to  you 


LITERARY  SOLITUDE.  149 

just  as  they  pass  through  my  mind — just  as  tbey  used  to 
be  when  we  conversed  together  on  these  or  any  other  sub- 
ject ;  when  we  sauntered  alo7ie,  or  as  we  have  often  done 
with  good  Arbuthnot,  and  the  jocose  Pean  of  St.  Patrick, 
among  the  multiplied  scenes  of  your  little  garden.  The 
theatre  is  large  enough  for  my  ambition."  Such  a  scene 
opens  a  beautiful  subject  for  a  curious  portrait-painter. 
These  literary  groups  in  the  garden  of  Pope,  sauntering, 
or  divided  in  confidential  intercourse,  would  furnish  a 
scene  of  literary  repose  and  enjoyment  among  some  of 
the  most  illustrious  names  in  our  literature. 


CHAPTER  X. 


Literary  eolitude. — Its  necessity. — Its  pleasures. — Of  visitors  by 
profession. — Its  inconveniences. 

THE  literary  character  is  reproached  with  an  extreme 
passion  for  retirement,  cultivating  those  insulating 
habits,  which,  while  they  are  great  interruptions,  and 
even  weakeners,  of  domestic  happiness,  induce  at  the 
same  time  in  public  life  to  a  secession  from  its  cares,  and 
an  avoidance  of  its  active  duties.  Yet  the  vacancies  of 
retired  men  are  eagerly  filled  by  the  many  unemployed 
men  of  the  world  happily  framed  for  its  business.  We  do 
not  hear  these  accusations  raised  against  the  painter  who 
wears  away  his  days  by  his  easel,  or  the  musician  by  the 
side  of  his  instrument ;  and  much  less  should  we  against 
the  legal  and  commercial  character ;  yet  all  these  are  as 
much  "withdrawn  from  public  and  private  life  as  the  lit- 
erary character.  The  desk  is  as  insulating  as  the  library. 
Yet  the  man  who  is  working  for  his  individual  interest  is 
more  highly  estimated  than  the  retired  student,  whose 
disinterested  pursuits  are  at  least  more  profitable  to  the 


150  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

world  than  to  himself.  La  Bruy^re  discovered  the  world's 
erroneous  estimate  of  literary  labour :  "  There  requires  a 
better  name,"  he  says,  "  to  be  bestowed  on  the  leisure 
(the  idleness  he  calls  it)  of  the  literary  character, — to 
meditate,  to  compose,  to  read  and  to  be  tranquil,  should 
be  called  workmgy  But  so  invisible  is  the  progress  of 
intellectual  pursuits  and  so  rarely  are  the  objects  palpable 
to  the  observers,  that  the  literary  character  appears  to  be 
denied  for  his  pursuits,  what  cannot  be  refused  to  every 
other.  That  unremitting  application  and  unbroken  series 
of  their  thoughts,  admired  in  every  profession,  is  only 
complained  of  in  that  one  whose  professors  with  so  much 
sincerity  mourn  over  the  brevity  of  life,  which  has  often 
closed  on  them  while  sketching  their  works. 

It  is,  however,  only  in  solitude  that  the  genius  of  emi- 
nent men  has  been  formed.  There  their  first  thoughts 
sprang,  and  there  it  vsdll  become  them  to  find  their  last : 
for  the  solitude  of  old  age — and  old  age  must  be  often  in 
solitude — may  be  found  the  happiest  with  the  literary 
character.  Solitude  is  the  nurse  of  enthusiasm,  and  en- 
thusiasm is  the  true  parent  of  genius.  In  all  ages  solitude 
has  been  called  for — has  been  flown  to.  No  considerable 
work  was  ever  composed  till  its  author,  like  an  ancient 
magician,  first  retired  to  the  grove,  or  to  the  closet,  to  in- 
vocate.  When  genius  languishes  in  an  irksome  solitude 
among  crowds,  that  is  the  moment  to  fly  into  seclusion 
and  meditation.  There  is  a  society  in  the  deepest  solitude ; 
in  all  the  men  of  genius  of  the  past 

First  of  your  kind,  Society  divine  I 

and  in  themselves  ;  for  there  only  can  they  indulge  in  the 
romances  of  their  soul,  and  there  only  can  they  occupy 
tlicmselvcs  in  tlieir  dreams  and  their  vigils,  and,  with 
the  morning,  fly  witliout  interruption  to  the  labour  they 
had  reluctantly  quitted.  If  there  be  not  periods  when 
they  shall  allow  their  days  to  melt  harmoniously  into 


SOLITUDE   OF   GENIUS.  151 

each  other,  if  they  do  not  pass  whole  weeks  together  in 
their  study,  without  iuterveniag  absences,  they  mil  not 
he  admitted  into  the  last  recess  of  the  Muses.  Whether 
their  glory  come  from  researches,  or  from  enthusiasm, 
time,  with  not  a  feather  ruffled  on  his  wings,  time  alone 
opens  discoveries  and  kindles  meditation.  This  desert  of 
solitude,  so  vast  and  so  dreary  to  the  man  of  the  world, 
to  the  man  of  genius  is  the  magical  garden  of  Armida, 
whose  enchantments  arose  amidst  solitude,  while  solitude 
was  everywhere  among  those  enchantments. 

Whenever  Michael  Angelo,  that  "  divine  madman,"  as 
Richardson  once  wrote  on  the  back  of  one  of  his  draw- 
ings, was  meditating  on  some  great  design,  he  closed 
himself  up  from  the  world,  "  Why  do  you  lead  so  soli- 
tary a  life  ?"  asked  a  friend.  "  Art,"  replied  the  sublime 
artist,  "  Art  is  a  jealous  god ;  it  requires  the  whole  and 
entire  man."  During  his  mighty  labour  in  the  Sistiue 
Chapel,  he  refused  to  have  any  communication  with  any 
person  even  at  his  own  house.  Such  undisturbed  and 
solitary  attention  is  demanded  even  by  undoubted  genius 
as  the  price  of  performance.  How  then  shall  we  deem 
of  that  feebler  race  who  exult  in  occasional  excellence, 
and  who  so  often  deceive  themselves  by  mistaking  the 
evanescent  flashes  of  genius  for  that  holier  flame  which 
burns  on  its  altar,  because  the  fuel  is  incessantly  sup- 
plied ? 

We  observe  men  of  genius,  in  public  situations,  sigh- 
ing for  this  solitude.  Amidst  the  impediments  of  the 
world,  they  are  doomed  to  view  their  intellectual  ban- 
quet often  rising  before  them,  like  some  fairy  delusion, 
never  to  taste  it.  The  great  Verulam  often  complained 
of  the  disturbances  of  his  public  lile,  and  rejoiced  in  the 
occasional  retirement  he  stole  from  public  aflairs.  "  And 
now,  because  I  am  in  the  country,  I  will  send  you  some 
of  my  country  fruits,  which  with  me  are  good  medita- 
tions ;   when  I   am  in  the   city,  they  are  choked  with 


152  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

business,"  Lord  Clarendon,  whose  life  so  happily  com- 
bined the  contemplative  with  the  active  powers  of  man, 
dwells  on  three  periods  of  retirement  which  he  enjoyed  ; 
he  always  took  pleasure  in  relating  the  great  tranquillity 
of  spirit  experienced  during  his  solitude  at  Jersey,  where 
for  more  than  two  yeai-s,  employed  on  his  history,  he 
daily  wrote  "  one  sheet  of  large  paper  with  his  own 
hand."  At  the  close  of  his  life,  his  literary  labours  in 
his  other  retirements  are  detailed  with  a  proud  satisfac- 
tion. Each  of  his  solitudes  occasioned  a  new  acquisi- 
tion ;  to  one  he  owed  the  Spanish,  to  another  the  French, 
and  to  a  third  the  Italian  literature.  The  public  are  not 
yet  acquainted  with  the  fertility  of  Lord  Clarendon's 
literary  labours.  It  was  not  vanity  that  induced  Scipio 
to  declare  of  solitude,  that  it  had  no  loneliness  for  him, 
since  he  voluntarily  retired  amidst  a  glorious  life  to  his 
Linternum.  Cicero  was  uneasy  amid  applauding  Rome, 
and  has  distinguished  his  numerous  works  by  the  titles 
of  his  various  villas.  Aulus  Gellius  marked  his  solitude 
by  his  "  Attic  Nights."  The  "  Golden  Grove  "  of  Jeremy 
Taylor  is  the  produce  of  his  retreat  at  the  Earl  of  Car- 
berry's  seat  in  Wales ;  and  the  "  Diversions  of  Purley  " 
preserved  a  man  of  genius  for  posterity.  Voltaire  had 
talents  well  adapted  for  society ;  but  at  one  period 
of  his  life  he  passed  five  years  in  the  most  secret  seclu- 
sion, and  indeed  usually  lived  in  retirement.  Montes- 
quieu quitted  the  brilliant  circles  of  Paris  for  his  books 
and  his  meditations,  and  was  ridiculed  by  the  gay 
triflers  he  deserted ;  "  but  my  great  work,"  he  observes 
in  triumph,  "  avance  k  pas  de  g6ant."  Harrington,  to 
compose  his  "  Oceana,"  severed  himself  from  the  society 
of  his  friends.  Descartes,  inflamed  by  genius,  hires  an 
obscure  house  in  an  unfrequented  quarter  at  Paris,  and 
there  ho  passes  tAvo  years,  unknown  to  his  acquaintance. 
Adam  Smitli,  after  tlie  publication  of  his  first  work,  with- 
drew  into   a   retirement   that   lasted   ten   years:    even 


VALUE   OF   TIME.  153 

Hume  rallies  liirn  for  separating  himself  from  the 
world ;  but  by  this  means  the  great  political  inquirer 
satisfied  the  world  by  his  great  work.  And  thus  it  was 
with  men  of  genius  long  ere  Petrarch  withdrew  to  his 
Val  chiusa. 

The  interruption  of  visitors  by  profession  has  been 
feelingly  lamented  by  men  of  letters.  The  mind,  matur- 
ing its  speculations,  feels  the  unexpected  conversation  of 
cold  ceremony  chilling  as  March  winds  over  the  blos- 
soms of  the  Spring,  Those  unhappy  beings  who  wander 
from  house  to  house,  privileged  by  the  charter  of  society 
to  obstruct  the  knowledge  they  cannot  impart,  to  weary 
because  they  are  wearied,  or  to  seek  amusement  at  the 
cost  of  others,  belong  to  that  class  of  society  which 
have  affixed  no  other  idea  to  time  than  that  of  getting 
rid  of  it.  These  are  judges  not  the  best  qualified  to 
comprehend  the  nature  and  evil  of  their  depredations  in 
the  silent  apartment  of  the  studious,  who  may  be  often 
driven  to  exclaim,  in  the  words  of  the  Psalmist,  "  Yerily 
I  have  cleansed  my  heart  in  vain,  and  washed  my  hands 
in  innocency :  for  all  the  day  long  have  I  been  plagued^ 
and  chastened  every  morning^ 

When  Montesquieu  was  deeply  engaged  in  his  great 
work,  he  writes  to  a  friend : — "  The  favoui*  which  your 
friend  Mr,  Hein  often  does  me  to  pass  his  mornings  with 
me,  occasions  great  damage  to  my  work  as  well  by  his 
impure  French  as  the  length  of  his  details," — "We  are 
afraid,"  said  some  of  those  visitors  to  Baxter,  "  that  we 
break  in  upon  your  time," — "  To  be  sure  you  do,"  replied 
the  disturbed  and  blunt  scholar.  To  hint  as  gently  as 
he  could  to  his  friends  that  he  was  avaricious  of  time, 
one  of  the  learned  Italians  had  a  prominent  inscription 
over  the  door  of  his  study,  intimating  that  whoever 
remained  there  must  join  in  his  labours.  The  amiable 
Melancthon,  incapable  of  a  harsh  expression,  when  he 
received  these  idle  visits,  only  noted  down  the  time  he 


154  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

had  expended,  that  he  might  reanimate  his  indastry, 
and  not  lose  a  day.  Evelyn,  continually  importuned  by 
morning  visitors,  or  "  taken  up  hy  other  impertinencies 
of  my  life  in  the  country,"  stole  his  hours  from  his  night 
rest  "  to  redeem  his  losses."  The  literary  character  has 
been  driven  to  the  most  inventive  shifts  to  escape  the 
irruption  of  a  formidable  party  at  a  single  rush,  who 
enter,  vs^ithout  "  besieging  or  beseeching,"  as  Milton  has 
it.  The  late  Mr.  Ellis,  a  man  of  elegant  tastes  and  poeti- 
cal temperament,  on  one  of  these  occasions,  at  his  country- 
house,  assured  a  literary  friend,  that  when  driven  to 
the  last,  he  usually  made  his  escape  by  a  leap  out  of  the 
window ;  and  Boileau  has  noticed  a  similar  dilemma  when 
at  the  villa  of  the  President  Lamoignon,  while  they  were 
holding  their  delightful  conversations  in  his  grounds. 

Quelquefols  de  ficheux  arrivent  trois  voices, 
Que  du  pare  a  I'instant  assiegent  les  allees ; 
Alors  sauve  qui  peut,  et  quatre  fois  heureux 
Qui  sait  s'echapper,  a  quelque  autre  ignore  d'eux. 

Brand  Hollis  endeavoured  to  hold  out  "the  idea  of 
singularity  as  a  shield;"  and  the  great  Kobert  Boyle 
was  compelled  to  advertise  in  a  newspaper  that  he  must 
decline  visits  on  certain  days,  that  he  might  have  leisure 
to  finish  some  of  his  works.* 

*  This  curious  advertisement  is  preserved  in  Dr.  Birch's  "  Life  of 
Boyle,"  p.  272.  Boyle's  labours  were  so  exhausting  to  his  naturally 
weak  frame,  and  so  continuous  from  his  eager  desire  for  investigation, 
that  this  advertisement  was  concocted  by  tlie  advice  of  his  physician, 
"  to  desire  to  bo  excused  from  receiving  visits  (unless  upon  occasions 
very  extraordinary)  two  days  in  the  week,  namely,  on  the  forenoon  of 
Tuesdays  and  Fridays  (both  foreign  post  days),  and  on  Wednesdays 
and  Saturdays  in  the  afternoons,  that  he  may  liave  nome  time,  both  to 
recruit  liis  spirits,  to  range  his  papers,  and  fill  up  the  lacunce  of  them, 
and  to  take  some  care  of  liis  aflairs  in  Ireland,  which  are  very  much 
disordered  and  have  their  face  often  changed  by  the  public  calamities 
there."  lie  ordered  likewise  a  board  to  bo  placed  over  his  door,  with 
an  inscription  signifying  when  he  did,  and  when  he  did  not  receive 
vi*it3. — Ei>. 


SOLITUDE   OF  GEXIUS.  155 

Boccaccio  has  given  an  interesting  account  of  the 
mode  of  life  of  the  studious  Petrarch,  for  on  a  visit  he 
found  that  Petrarch  wouki  not  suffer  his  hours  of  study 
to  be  broken  into  even  by  the  person  whom  of  all  men  he 
loved  most,  and  did  not  quit  his  morning  studies  for  his 
guest,  who  during  that  time  occupied  himself  by  reading 
or  transcribing  the  works  of  his  master.  At  the  decline 
of  day,  Petrarch  quitted  his  study  for  his  garden,  where 
he  delighted  to  open  his  heart  in  mutual  confidence. 

But  this  solitude,  at  first  a  necessity,  and  then  a 
pleasure,  at  length  is  not  borne  without  repining.  To 
tame  the  fervid  wUdness  of  youth  to  the  strict  regulari- 
ties of  study,  is  a  sacrifice  performed  by  the  votary ;  but 
even  Milton  appears  to  have  felt  this  u'ksome  period  of 
life ;  for  in  the  preface  to  "  Smectymnuus,"  he  says : — "  It 
is  but  justice  not  to  defraud  of  due  esteem  the  wearisome 
labours  and  studious  watchings  wherein  I  have  spent 
and  tired  out  almost  a  whole  youth."  Cowley,  that 
enthusiast  for  seclusion,  in  his  retirement  calls  himself 
"the  Melancholy  Cowley."  I  have  seen  an  original 
letter  of  this  poet  to  Evelyn,  where  he  expresses  hia 
eagerness  to  see  Sir  George  Mackenzie's  "Essay  on 
Solitude ;"  for  a  copy  of  which  he  had  sent  over  the  town, 
without  obtaining  one,  being  "  either  all  bought  up,  or 
burnt  in  the  fire  of  London."* — "  I  am  the  more  de. 
sii'ous,"  he  says,  "  because  it  is  a  subject  in  which  I  am 
most  deeply  interested.     Thus  Cowley  was  requkiug  a 

*  This  event  happening  when  London  was  the  chief  emporium  of 
books,  occasioned  many  printed  just  before  the  time  to  be  excessively 
rare.  The  booksellers  of  Paternoster-row  had  removed  their  stock  to 
the  vaults  below- St.  Paul's  for  safety  as  the  fire  approached  them. 
Among  the  stock  was  Prynne's  records,  vol.  iii.,  which  were  all  burnt 
except  a  few  copies  which  had  been  sent  into  the  country,  a  perfect 
set  has  been  valued  in  consequence  at  one  hundred  pounds.  The  rarity 
of  all  books  published  about  the  era  of  the  great  fire  of  London  induced 
(me  curious  collector.  Dr.  Bhss,  of  Oxford,  to  especially  devote  himself 
to  gathering  such  in  his  library. — Ed. 


156  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

book  to  confirm  his  predilection,  and  we  know  I  e  made 
the  experiment,  which  did  not  prove  a  happy  one.  We 
find  even  Gibbon,  with  all  his  fame  about  him,  antici- 
pating the  dread  he  entertained  of  solitude  in  advanced 
life.  "  I  feel,  and  shall  continue  to  feel,  that  domestic 
solitude,  however  it  may  be  alleviated  by  the  world,  by 
study,  and  even  by  friendship,  is  a  comfortless  state, 
which  will  grow  more  painful  as  I  descend  in  the  vale  of 
years."  And  again: — "Your  visit  has  only  served  to 
remind  me  that  man,  however  amused  or  occupied  in  his 
closet,  was  not  made  to  live  alone." 

Had  the  mistaken  notions  of  Sprat  not  deprived  us  of 
Cowley's  correspondence,  we  doubtless  had  viewed  the 
picture  of  lonely  genius  touched  by  a  tender  pencil.* 
But  we  have  Shenstone,  and  Gray,  and  Swift.  The  heart 
of  Shenstone  bleeds  in  the  dead  oblivion  of  solitude ; — 
"  Now  I  am  come  from  a  visit,  every  little  uneasiness  is 
suflicient  to  introduce  my  whole  train  of  melancholy  con- 
siderations, and  to  make  me  utterly  dissatisfied  with  the 
life  I  now  lead,  and  the  life  I  foresee  I  shall  lead.  I  am 
angry,  and  envious,  and  dejected,  and  frantic,  and  disre- 
gard all  present  things,  as  becomes  a  madman  to  do.  I 
am  infinitely  pleased,  though  it  is  a  gloomy  joy,  with  the 
application  of  Dr.  Swift's  complaint,  that  he  is  forced  to 
die  in  a  rage,  like  a  rat  in  a  poisoned  hole."  Let  the 
lover  of  solitude  muse  on  its  picture  throughout  the  year, 
in  this  stanza,  by  the  same  amiable  but  suffering  poet : — 

Tedious  again  to  curse  the  drizzling  day, 
Again  to  trace  the  wintry  tracks  of  snow, 

Or,  soothed  by  vernal  airs,  again  survey 

The  self-same  hawthorns  bud,  and  cowslips  blow. 

Swift's  letters  paint  -wHith  terrifying  colors  a  picture  of 
solitude  ;  and  at  length  his  despair  closed  with  idiotism. 
Even  the  playful  muse  of  Gresset  throws  a  sombre  queni- 
lousness  over  tlic  solitude  of  men  of  genius : — 

*  See  the  article  on  Cowley  in  "  Calamities  of  Authors." 


MEDITATIONS   OF   GENIUS.  ]57 

Je  les  vois,  victimes  du  genie, 
Au  foible  prix  d'un  eclat  passager, 
Vivre  isoles,  sans  jouir  de  la  vie  I 
Yingt  ans  d'ennuis  pour  quelques  jours  de  gloire. 

Such  are  the  necessity,  the  pleasures,  and  the  incon- 
veniences of  solitude !  It  ceases  to  be  a  question  whether 
men  of  genius  should  blend  with  the  masses  of  society ; 
for  whether  in  solitude,  or  in  the  world,  of  all  others  they 
must  learn  to  live  with  themselves.  It  is  in  the  world 
that  they  borrow  the  sparks  of  thought  that  fly  upwards 
and  perish :  but  the  flame  of  genius  can  only  be  lighted 
in  their  own  solitary  breast. 


CHAPTER    XI. 


The  meditations  of  genius. — A  work  on  the  art  of  meditation  not  yet 
produced. — Predisposing  the  mind. — Imagination  awakens  imagina- 
tion.— Generating  feelings  by  music. — Slight  habits. — Darkness  and 
silence,  by  suspending  the  exercise  of  our  senses,  increase  the  vi- 
vacity of  our  conceptions. — The  arts  of  memory. — Memory  the  foun- 
dation of  genius. — Inventions  by  several  to  preserve  their  own 
moral  and  Uterary  character. — And  to  assist  their  studies. — The 
meditations  of  genius  depend  on  habit. — Of  the  night-time. — A  day 
of  meditation  should  precede  a  day  of  composition. — Works  of  mag- 
nitude from  slight  conceptions. — Of  thoughts  never  written. — The 
art  of  meditation  exercised  at  all  hours  and  places. — Continuity  of 
attention  the  source  of  philosophical  discoveries. — Stillness  of  medi- 
tation the  first  state  of  existence  in  genius. 

ACOISTTINUITY  of  attention,  a  patient  quietness  of 
mind,  forms  one  of  the  characteristics  of  genius. 
To  think,  and  to  feel,  constitute  the  two  grand  divisions 
of  men  of  genius — the  men  of  reasoning  and  the  men  of 
imagination.  There  is  a  thread  in  our  thoughts,  as  there 
is  a  pulse  in  our  hearts ;  he  who  can  hold  the  one,  knows 


158  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

how  to  think ;  and  he  who  can  move  the  other,  knows 
how  to  feel. 

A  work  on  the  art  of  meditation  has  not  yet  been  pro- 
duced ;  yet  such  a  work  might  prove  of  immense  advan- 
tage to  him  who  never  happened  to  have  more  than  one 
solitary  idea.  The  pursuit  of  a  single  principle  has  pro- 
duced a  great  system.  Thus  probably  we  owe  Adam 
Smith  to  the  French  economists.  And  a  loose  hint  has 
conducted  to  a  new  discovery.  Thus  Girard,  taking  ad- 
vantage of  an  idea  first  started  by  Fenelon,  produced 
his  "  Synonymes."  But  while,  in  every  manual  art,  every 
great  workman  improves  on  his  predecessor,  of  the  art  of 
the  mind,  notwithstanding  the  facility  of  practice,  and 
our  incessant  experience,  millions  are  yet  ignorant  of  the 
first  rudiments ;  and  men  of  genius  themselves  are  rarely 
acquainted  with  the  materials  they  are  working  on.  Cer- 
tain constituent  principles  of  the  mind  itself,  which  the 
study  of  metaphysics  curiously  developes,  ofier  many  im- 
portant regulations  in  this  desirable  art.  We  may  even 
suspect,  since  men  of  genius  in  the  present  age  have  con- 
fided to  us  the  secrets  of  theu-  studies,  that  this  art  may 
be  carried  on  by  more  obvious  means  than  at  first  would 
appear,  and  even  by  mechanical  contrivances  and  prac- 
tical habits,  A  mind  well  organised  may  be  regulated 
by  a  single  contrivance,  as  by  a  bit  of  lead  we  govern 
the  fine  machinery  by  which  we  track  the  flight  of  time. 
Many  secrets  in  this  art  of  the  mind  yet  remain  as  insu- 
lated facts,  which  may  hereafter  enter  into  an  experi- 
mental history. 

Johnson  has  a  curious  observation  on  the  Mind  itself. 
He  thinks  it  obtains  a  stationary  point,  from  whence  it 
can  never  advance,  occurring  before  the  middle  of  life. 
"  When  the  powers  of  nature  have  attained  their  intended 
energy,  they  can  be  no  more  advanced.  The  shrub  can 
never  become  a  tree.  Nothing  then  remains  but  prac- 
tice and  experience ;  and  perhaps  why  they  do  so  little 


POWERS   OF   MIND.  159 

may  he  icorth  inquiry.''''  *  The  result  of  this  inquiry 
would  probably  lay  a  broader  foundation  for  this  art  of 
the  mind  than  we  have  hitherto  possessed.  Adam 
Ferguson  has  exj^ressed  himself  with  sublimity  : — "  The 
lustre  which  man  casts  around  him,  like  the  flame  of  a 
meteor,  shines  only  while  his  motion  continues ;  the  mo- 
ments of  rest  and  of  obscurity  are  the  same."  What  is 
this  art  of  meditation,  but  the  power  of  withdrawing 
ourselves  from  the  world,  to  view  that  world  moving 
within  ourselves  while  we  are  in  repose  ?  As  the  artist 
by  an  optical  instrument,  reflects  and  concentrates  the 
boundless  landscape  around  him,  and  patiently  traces 
all  nature  in  that  small  space. 

There  is  a  government  of  our  thoughts.  The  mind  of 
genius  can  be  made  to  take  a  particular  disposition  or 
train  of  ideas.  It  is  a  remarkable  circumstance  in  the 
studies  of  men  of  genius,  that  previous  to  composition 
they  have  often  awakened  their  imagination  by  the  im- 
agination of  their  favourite  masters.  By  touching  a  mag- 
net, they  become  a  magnet.  A  circumstance  has  been 
recorded  of  Gray,  by  Mr.  Mathias,  "  as  worthy  of  all  ac- 
ceptation among  the  higher  votaries  of  the  divine  art, 
when  they  are  assured  that  Mr.  Gray  never  sate  down  to 
compose  any  poetry  without  previously,  and  for  a  con- 
siderable time,  reading  the  works  of  Spenser."  But  the 
circumstance  was  not  unusual  with  Malherbe,  Corneille, 
and  Racine  ;  and  the  most  fervid  verses  of  Homer,  and 
the  most  tender  of  Euripides,  were  often  repeated  by 
Milton.  Even  antiquity  exhibits  the  same  exciting  inter- 
course of  the  mind  of  genius.  Cicero  informs  us  how 
his  eloquence  caught  inspiration  from  a  constant  study 
of  the  Latin  and  Grecian  poetry  ;  and  it  has  been  record- 
ed of  Pompey,  who  was  great  even  in  his  youth,  that  he 
never    undertook   any   considerable    enterprise   without 

*I  recommend  the  reader  to  turn  to  the  whole  passage,  in  Johnson's 
"Letters  to  Mrs.  Thrale,"  voL  i.,  p.  296. 


160  LITERARY   CnARACTER. 

animating  his  genius  by  having  read  to  him  the  character 
of  Achilles  in  the  first  Iliad  ;  although  he  acknowledged 
that  the  enthusiasm  he  caught  came  rather  from  the  poet 
than  the  hero.  When  Bossuet  had  to  compose  a  funeral 
oration,  he  was  accustomed  to  retire  for  several  days  to 
his  study,  to  ruminate  over  the  pages  of  Homer;  and 
when  asked  the  reason  of  this  habit,  he  exclaimed,  in 
these  lines — 

^magnam  mihi  mentem,  animumque 

Delius  inspiret  Vates. 

It  is  on  the  same  principle  of  predisposing  the  mind, 
that  many  liave  first  generated  their  feelings  by  the 
symphonies  of  music,  Altieri  often  before  he  wrote 
prepared  his  mind  by  listening  to  music :  "  Almost  all 
my  tragedies  were  sketched  in  my  mind  either  in  the  act 
of  hearing  music,  or  a  few  hours  after" — a  circumstance 
which  has  been  recorded  of  many  others.  Lord  Bacon 
had  music  often  played  in  the  room  adjoining  his  study : 
Milton  listened  to  his  organ  for  his  solemn  inspiration, 
and  music  was  even  necessary  to  Warburton.  The 
symphonies  which  awoke  in  the  poet  sublime  emotions, 
might  have  composed  the  inventive  mind  of  the  great 
critic  in  the  visions  of  his  theoretical  mysteries.  A  cele- 
brated French  preacher,  Bourdaloue  or  Massillon,  wa8 
once  found  playing  on  a  violin,  to  screw  his  mind  up  to 
the  pitch,  preparatory  for  his  sermon,  which  within  a 
short  interval  he  was  to  preach  before  the  court.  Cur- 
ran's  fiivourite  mode  of  meditation  was  with  his  violin  in 
his  hand;  for  hours  together  would  he  forget  himself, 
running  voluntaries  over  the  strings,  while  his  imagina- 
tion in  collecting  its  tones  was  opening  all  his  faculties 
for  the  coming  emergency  at  the  bar.  When  Leonardo 
da  Vinci  was  painting  his  "  Lisa,"  commonly  called  La 
Joconde^  lie  had  musicians  constantly  in  waiting,  whose 
light  harmonics,  by  their  associations,  inspired  feelings  of 

Tipsy  dance  and  revelry. 


PECULIARITIES   OF   GENIUS.  161 

There  are  slight  habits  which  may  be  contracted  by 
genius,  which  assist  the  action  of  the  mind ;  but  these 
are  of  a  nature  so  trivial,  that  they  seem  ridiculous 
when  they  have  not  been  experienced  :  but  the  imagina- 
tive race  exist  by  the  acts  of  imagination.  Haydn 
Avould  never  sit  down  to  compose  without  being  in  full 
dress,  with  his  great  diamond  ring,  and  the  finest 
paper  to  write  doAvn  his  musical  compositions.  Rousseau 
has  told  us,  when  occupied  by  his  celebrated  romance,  of 
the  influence  of  the  rose-coloured  knots  of  ribbon  which 
tied  his  portfolio,  his  fine  paper,  his  brilliant  ink,  and  his 
gold  sand.  Similar  facts  are  related  of  many.  When- 
ever Apostolo  Zeno,  the  predecessor  of  Metastasio,  pre- 
pared himself  to  compose  a  new  drama,  he  used  to  say 
to  himself,  "  Apostolo !  reconlati  die  qiiesta  h  la  pririia 
opera  che  dai  i?i  luce.'''' — "  Apostolo  !  remember  that  this 
is  the  first  opera  you  are  presenting  to  the  public."  We 
are  scarcely  aware  how  we  may  govern  our  thoughts  by 
means  of  our  sensations :  De  Luc  was  subject  to  violent 
bursts  of  passion  ;  but  he  calmed  the  interior  tumult  by 
the  artifice  of  filling  his  mouth  with  sweets  and  comfits. 
When  Goldoni  found  his  sleep  disturbed  by  the  obtrusive 
ideas  still  floating  from  the  studies  of  the  day,  he  con- 
trived to  lull  himself  to  rest  by  conning  in  his  mind  a 
vocabulary  of  the  Venetian  dialect,  translating  some 
word  into  Tuscan  and  French ;  which  being  a  very  unin- 
teresting occupation,  at  the  third  or  fourth  version  this 
recipe  never  failed.  This  was  an  art  of  withdrawing 
attention  from  the  greater  to  the  less  emotion ;  by  which, 
as  the  interest  weakened,  the  excitement  ceased.  Men- 
delssohn, whose  feeble  and  too  sensitive  frame  was  often 
reduced  to  the  last  stage  of  sufiering  by  intellectual  exer- 
tion, Avhen  engaged  in  any  point  of  difticulty,  would  in 
an  instant  contrive  a  perfect  cessation  from  thinking,  by 
mechanically  going  to  the  window,  and  counting  the 
tiles^upon  the  roof  of  his  neighbour's  house.     Such  facts 


162  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

show  how  much  art  may  be  concerned  in  tlie  government 
of  our  thoughts. 

It  is  an  unquestionable  fact  that  some  profound  think- 
ers cannot  pursue  their  intellectual  operations  amidst  the 
distractions  of  light  and  noise.  With  them,  attention 
to  what  is  passing  within  is  interrupted  by  the  discordant 
impressions  from  objects  pressing  and  obtruding  on  the 
external  senses.  There  are  indeed  instances,  as  in  the 
case  of  Priestley  and  others,  of  authors  who  have  pui'sued 
their  literary  works  amidst  conversation  and  their  family ; 
but  such  minds  are  not  the  most  original  thinkers,  and 
the  most  refined  writers ;  or  their  subjects  are  of  a  nature 
which  requires  little  more  than  judgment  and  diligence. 
It  is  the  mind  only  in  its  fulness  which  can  brood  over 
thoughts  till  the  incubation  produces  vitality.  Such  is 
the  feeling  in  this  act  of  study.  In  Plutarch's  time  they 
showed  a  subterraneous  place  of  study  built  by  De- 
mosthenes, and  where  he  often  continued  for  two  or 
three  months  together.  Malebranche,  Hobbes,  Corneille, 
and  others,  darkened  their  apartment  when  they  wrote, 
to  concentrate  their  thoughts,  as  Milton  says  of  the 
mind,  "  in  the  spacious  circuits  of  her  musing."  It  is  in 
proportion  as  we  can  suspend  the  exercise  of  all  our  other 
senses  that  the  liveliness  of  our  conception  increases — this 
is  the  observation  of  the  most  elegant  metaphysician  of 
our  times  ;  and  when  Lord  Cliesterfield  advised  that  his 
pupil — whose  attention  wandered  on  every  passing  object, 
which  unfitted  him  for  study — should  be  instructed  in  a 
darkened  apartment,  he  was  aware  of  this  principle ; 
the  boy  would  loarn,  and  retain  what  he  learned,  ten 
times  as  well.  We  close  our  eyes  whenever  we  would 
collect  our  mind  together,  or  trace  more  distinctly  an 
object  which  seems  to  have  faded  away  in  our  recollec- 
tion. The  study  of  an  author  or  an  artist  would  be  ill 
placed  in  the  midst  of  a  beautiful  landscape ;  the  "  Pen- 
Bcroso"  of  Milton,  "hid   from  day's  garish  eye,"  is  the 


CONDUCT   OF   THOUGHT.  163 

man  of  genius.  A  secluded  and  naked  apartment,  with 
nothing  but  a  desk,  a  chair,  and  a  single  sheet  of  paper, 
was  for  fifty  years  the  study  of  Buffon  ;  the  single  orna- 
ment was  a  print  of  Newton  placed  before  his  eyes — 
nothing  broke  into  the  unity  of  his  reveries.  Cumber- 
land's liveliest  comedy,  TJie  West  Indian,  was  written  in 
an  unfurnished  apartment,  close  in  front  of  an  Irish  turf- 
stack  ;  and  our  comic  writer  was  fully  aware  of  the 
advantages  of  the  situation.  "  In  all  my  hours  of  study," 
says  that  elegant  writer,  "  it  has  been  through  life  my 
object  so  to  locate  myself  as  to  have  little  or  nothing  to 
distract  my  attention,  and  therefore  brilliant  rooms  or 
pleasant  prospects  I  have  ever  avoided,  A  dead  wall,  or, 
as  in  the  present  case,  an  Irish  turf-stack,  are  not  attrac- 
tions that  can  call  off  the  fancy  from  its  pursuits ;  and 
whilst  in  these  pursuits  it  can  find  interest  and  occupa- 
tion, it  wants  no  outward  aid  to  cheer  it.  My  father,  I 
believe,  rather  wondered  at  my  choice."  The  principle 
ascertained,  the  consequences  are  obvious. 

The  arts  of  memory  have  at  all  times  excited  the  at- 
tention of  the  studious  ;  they  open  a  world  of  undivulged 
mysteries,  where  every  one  seems  to  form  some  discovery 
of  his  own,  rather  exciting  his  astonishment  than  enlarg- 
ing his  comprehension.  Le  Sage,  a  modern  philosopher, 
had  a  memory  singularly  defective.  Incapable  of  acquiring 
languages,  and  deficient  in  all  those  studies  which  depend 
on  the  exercise  of  the  memory,  it  became  the  object  of' 
his  subsequent  exertions  to  supply  this  deficiency  by 
the  order  and  method  he  observed  in  arranging  every 
new  fact  or  idea  he  obtained ;  so  that  in  reality  with  a 
very  bad  memory,  it  appears  that  he  was  still  enabled 
to  lecall  at  will  any  idea  or  any  knowledge  which  he 
had  stored  up.  John  Hunter  happily  illustrated  the 
advantages  which  every  one  derives  from  putting  his 
thoughts  in  writing,  "  it  resembles  a  tradesman  taking 
stock ;  "without  which  he  never  knows  either  what  he  pos- 


164  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

BesseSj^  or  in  what  he  is  deficient."  The  late  William 
Hutton,  a  man  of  an  original  cast  of  mind,  as  an  experi- 
ment in  memory,  opened  a  book  which  he  had  divided 
into  365  columns,  according  to  the  days  of  the  year :  he 
resolved  to  try  to  recollect  an  anecdote,  for  every  column, 
as  insignificant  and  remote  as  he  was  able,  rejecting  all 
under  ten  years  of  age ;  and  to  his  surprise,  he  filled 
those  spaces  for  small  reminiscences,  within  ten  columns  ; 
but  till  this  experiment  had  been  made,  he  never  con- 
ceived the  extent  of  his  faculty.  Wolf,  the  German 
metaphysician,  relates  of  himself  that  he  had,  by  the 
most  persevering  habit,  in  bed  and  amidst  darkness, 
resolved  his  algebraic  problems,  and  geometrically  com- 
posed all  his  methods  merely  by  the  aid  of  his  imagina- 
tion and  memory ;  and  when  in  the  daytime  he  verified 
the  one  and  the  other  of  these  operations,  he  had  always 
found  them  true.  Unquestionably,  such  astonishing  in- 
stances of  a  well-regulated  memory  depend  on  the  prac- 
tice of  its  art  gradually  formed  by  frequent  associations. 
When  we  reflect  that  whatever  we  know,  and  whatever 
we  feel,  are  the  very  smallest  portions  of  all  the  knowl- 
edge we  have  been  acquiring,  and  all  the  feelings  we 
have  experienced  through  life,  how  desirable  would  be 
that  art  which  should  again  open  the  scenes  which  have 
vanished,  and  revivify  the  emotions  which  other  impres- 
sions have  effaced  ?  But  the  faculty  of  memory,  although 
perhaps  the  most  manageable  of  all  others,  is  considered 
a  subordinate  one  ;  it  seems  only  a  grasping  and  ac- 
cumulating power,  and  in  the  work  of  genius  is  imagined 
to  produce  nothing  of  itself ;  yet  is  memory  the  founda- 
tion of  Genius,  whenever  this  faculty  is  associated  with 
imagination  and  passion  ;  with  men  of  genius  it  is  a 
chronology  not  merely  of  events,  but  of  emotions  ;  hence 
they  remember  nothing  that  is  not  interesting  to  their 
feelings.  Persons  of  inferior  capacity  have  imperfect 
recollections  from  feeble  impressions.     Are  not  the  in- 


THOUGHTS  UNEXECUTED.  165 

«idents  of  the  great  novelist  often  founded  on  tlie  com- 
mon ones  of  life  ?  and  the  personages  so  admu-ably  alive 
in  his  fictions,  were  they  not  discovered  among  the 
crowd  ?  The  ancients  have  described  the  Muses  as  the 
daughters  of  Memory ;  an  elegant  fiction,  indicating  the 
natural  and  intimate  connexion  between  imagination  and 
reminiscence. 

The  arts  of  memory  will  form  a  saving-bank  of  genius, 
to  which  it  may  have  recourse,  as  a  wealth  which  it  can 
accumulate  imperceptibly  amidst  the  ordinary  expendi- 
ture. Locke  taught  us  the  first  rudiments  of  this  art, 
when  he  showed  us  how  he  stox*ed  his  thoughts  and  his 
facts,  by  an  artificial  arrangement ;  and  Addison,  before 
he  commenced  his  "  Spectators,"  had  amassed  three  folios 
of  materials.  But  the  higher  step  will  be  the  volume 
which  shall  give  an  account  of  a  man  to  himself,  in 
which  a  single  obseiwation  immediately  becomes  a  clue 
of  past  knowledge,  restoring  to  him  his  lost  studies,  and 
his  evanescent  existence.  Self-contemplation  makes  the 
man  more  nearly  entire  :  and  to  preserve  the  past,  is  half 
of  immortality. 

The  worth  of  the  diary  must  depend  on  the  diarist ; 
but  "  Of  the  things  which  concern  himself,"  as  Marcus 
Antoninus  entitles  his  celebrated  work — this  volume, 
reserved  for  solitary  contemplation,  should  be  considered 
as  a  future  relic  of  ourselves.  The  late  Sir  Samuel 
Romilly  commenced,  even  in  the  most  occupied  period 
of  his  life,  a  diary  of  his  last  twelve  yeai-s ;  which  he 
declares  in  his  will,  "  I  bequeath  to  my  children,  as  it 
may  be  serviceable  to  them."  Perhaps  in  this  Romilly 
bore  in  mind  the  example  of  another  eminent  lawyer,  the 
celebrated  Whitelocke,  who  had  drawn  up  a  great  work, 
entitled  "  Remembrances  of  the  Labours  of  Whitelocke, 
in  the  Annals  of  his  Life,  for  the  Instruction  of  his  Chil- 
dren."    That  neither  of  these  family  books  has  appeared, 


166  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

is  our  common  loss.     Such  legacies  from  such  men  ought 
to  become  the  inheritance  of  their  countrymen. 

To  register  the  transactions  of  the  day,  with  observa- 
tions on  what,  and  on  whom,  he  had  seen,  was  the  advice 
of  Lord  Kaimes  to  the  late  Mr.  Curwen;  and  for  years  his 
head  never  x'eached  its  pillow  without  performing  a  task 
which  habit  had  made  easy.  "  Our  best  and  surest  road 
to  knowledge,"  said  Lord  Kaimes,  "  is  by  profiting  from 
the  labours  of  others,  and  making  their  experience  our 
own."  In  this  manner  Curwen  tells  us  he  acquired  by 
habit  the  art  of  thinhing  y  and  he  is  an  able  testimony 
of  the  practicability  and  success  of  the  plan,  for  he  candid- 
ly tells  us,  "  Though  many  would  sicken  at  the  idea  of 
imposing  such  a  task  ujDon  themselves,  yet  the  attempt, 
persevered  in  for  a  short  time,  would  soon  become  a  cus- 
tom more  irksome  to  omit  than  it  was  difficult  to  com- 
mence." 

Could  we  look  into  the  libraries  of  authors,  the  studios 
of  artists,  and  the  laboratories  of  chemists,  and  view 
what  they  have  only  sketched,  or  what  lie  scattered  in 
fragments,  and  could  we  trace  their  first  and  last  thoughts, 
we  might  discover  that  we  have  lost  more  than  we  possess. 
There  we  might  view  foundations  without  superstructures, 
once  the  monuments  of  their  hopes  !  A  living  architect 
recently  exhibited  to  the  public  an  extraordinary  picture 
of  his  mind,  in  his  "  Architectural  Visions  of  Early  Fancy 
in  the  Gay  Morning  of  Youth,"  and  which  now  were 
"  dreams  in  the  evening  of  life."  In  this  picture  he  had 
thrown  together  all  the  architectural  designs  his  imagina- 
tion had  conceived,  but  which  remained  unexecuted. 
The  feeling  is  true,  however  whimsical  such  unac- 
complished fancies  might  appear  when  thrown  together 
into  one  picture.  In  literary  history  such  instances  have 
occurred  but  too  frequently :  the  imagination  of  youth, 
measuring  neitlier  time  nor  ability,  creates  what  neither 
time  nor  ability  can  execute.     Adam  Smith,  in  the  pref- 


THOUGHTS   UNEXECUTED.  167 

ace  to  the  first  edition  of  his  "Theory  of  Sentiments," 
announced  a  large  work  on  hxw  and  government ;  and  in 
a  late  edition  he  still  repeated  the  promise,  observing 
that  "  Thirty  years  ago  I  entertained  no  doubt  of  being 
able  to  execute  everything  which  it  announced."  The 
"  Wealth  of  Nations  "  was  but  a  fragment  of  this  greater 
work.  Surely  men  of  genius  of  all  others,  may  mourn 
over  the  length  of  art  and  the  brevity  of  life  ! 

Yet  many  glorious  efforts,  and  even  artificial  inventions, 
have  been  contrived  to  assist  and  save  its  moral  and 
literary  existence  in  that  perpetual  race  which  genius 
holds  with  time.  We  trace  its  triumph  in  the  studious 
days  of  such  men  as  Gibbon,  Sir  William  Jones,  and 
Priestley.  An  invention  by  which  the  moral  qualities 
and  the  acquisitions  of  the  literary  character  were  com- 
bined and  advanced  together,  is  what  Sir  William  Jones 
ingeniously  calls  his  "  Andrometer."  In  that  scale  of 
human  attainments  and  enjoyments  which  ought  to  ac- 
company the  eras  of  humaiii  life,  it  reminds  us  of  what 
was  to  be  learned,  and  what  to  be  practiced,  assigning 
to  stated  periods  tlieir  appropriate  pursuits.  An  occa- 
sional recurrence,  even  to  so  fanciful  a  standard,  would  be 
like  looking  on  a  clock  to  remind  the  student  how  he 
loiters,  or  how  he  advances  in  the  great  day's  work.  Such 
romantic  plans  have  been  often  invented  by  the  ardour 
of  genius.  There  was  no  communication  between  Sir 
William  Jones  and  Dr.  Franklin  ;  yet,  when  young,  the 
self-taught  philosopher  of  America  pursued  the  same 
genial  and  generous  devotion  to  his  own  moral  and  lit- 
erary excellence. 

"  It  was  about  this  time  I  conceived,"  says  Franklin, 
"  the  bold  and  arduous  project  of  arriving  at  moral 
perfection,"  &c.  He  began  a  daily  journal,  in  which 
against  thirteen  virtues  accompanied  by  seven  columns 
to  mark  the  days  of  the  week,  he  dotted  down  what  he 
considered  to  l^e  his  failures ;  he  found  himself  fuller  of 


J68  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

faults  than  he  had  imaghied,  but  at  length  his  blots 
diminished.  This  self-examination,  or  this  "  Faultbook," 
as  Lord  Shaftesbury  would  have  called  it,  was  always 
carried  about  him.  These  books  still  exist.  An  ad- 
ditional contrivance  was  that  of  journalising  his  twenty- 
four  hours,  of  which  he  has  furnished  us  both  with  de- 
scriptions and  specimens  of  the  method ;  and  he  closes 
with  a  solemn  assurance,  that  "  It  may  be  well  my 
posterity  should  be  informed,  that  to  this  little  artifice 
their  ancestor  owes  the  constant  felicity  of  his  life." 
Thus  we  see  the  fancy  of  Jones  and  the  sense  of  Frank- 
lin, unconnected  either  by  character  or  communication, 
but  acted  on  by  the  same  glorious  feeling  to  create  their 
own  moral  and  literary  character,  inventing  similar  al- 
though extraordinary  methods. 

The  memorials  of  Gibbon  and  Priestley  present  us  with 
the  experience  and  the  habits  of  the  literary  character. 
"  What  I  have  known,"  says  Dr.  Priestley,  "  mth  respect 
to  myself,  has  tended  much  to  lessen  both  my  admiration 
and  my  contempt  of  others.  Could  we  have  entered 
into  the  mind  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  and  have  traced  all 
the  steps  by  which  he  produced  his  great  works,  we 
might  see  nothing  very  extraordinary  in  the  process." 
Our  stiident,  with  an  ingenuous  simplicity,  opens  to  us 
that  "  variety  of  mechanical  expedients  by  which  he 
secured  and  arranged  his  thoughts,"  and  that  discipline 
of  the  mind,  by  means  of  a  peculiar  arrangcxnent  of 
his  studies  for  the  day  and  for  the  year,  in  which  he  rival 
led  the  calm  and  unalterable  system  pursued  by  Gibbon, 
Buffon,  and  Voltaire,  who  often  only  combined  the  knowl- 
edge they  obtained  by  humble  methods.  They  knew 
what  to  ask  for ;  and  where  what  is  wanted  may  be  found : 
they  made  use  of  an  intelligent  secretary  ;  aware,  as 
Lord  BacH^n  has  expressed  it,  that  some  books  "  may  be 
read  by  deputy." 

Buflbn  laid  down  an  excellent  rule  to  obtain  originality, 


MODES  OF  STUDY.  ^69 

when  he  advised  the  writer  first  to  exhaust  his  own 
thoughts,  before  he  attempted  to  consult  other  writers ; 
and  Gibbon,  the  most  experienced  reader  of  all  our 
writers,  offers  the  same  important  advice  to  an  author. 
"When  engaged  on  a  particular  subject,  he  tells  us,  "] 
suspended  my  perusal  of  any  new  book  on  the  subject, 
till  I  had  reviewed  all  that  I  knew,  or  believed,  or  had 
thought  on  it,  that  I  might  be  qualified  to  discern  how 
much  the  authors  added  to  my  original  stock."  The 
advice  of  Lord  Bacon,  that  we  should  pursue  our  studies 
in  whatever  disposition  the  mind  may  be,  is  excellent. 
If  happily  disposed,  we  shall  gain  a  great  step  ;  and  if 
indisposed,  we  "  shall  work  out  the  knots  and  strands  of 
the  mind,  and  make  the  middle  times  the  more  pleasant." 
Some  active  lives  have  passed  away  in  incessant  com- 
petition, like  those  of  Mozart,  Cicero,  and  Voltaire,  who 
were  restless,  perhaps  unhappy,  when  their  genius  was 
quiescent.  To  such  minds  the  constant  zeal  they  bring 
to  their  labour  supplies  the  absence  of  that  inspii-ation 
which  cannot  always  be  the  same,  nor  always  at  its 
height. 

Industry  is  the  feature  by  which  the  ancients  so 
frequently  describe  an  eminent  character ;  such  phrases 
as  "  increcUMli  mdustria  /  diUgentia  singulari^'*  are 
usual.  We  of  these  days  cannot  conceive  the  industry  of 
Cicero;  but  he  has  himself  told  us  that  he  suffered  no 
moments  of  his  leisure  to  escape  from  him.  Not  only 
his  spare  hours  were  consecrated  to  his  books ;  but  even 
on  days  of  business  he  would  take  a  few  turns  in  his 
walk,  to  meditate  or  to  dictate ;  many  of  his  letters  are 
dated  before  daylight,  some  from  the  senate,  at  his  meals, 
and  amid  his  morning  levees.  The  dawn  of  day  was 
the  summons  of  study  to  Sir  William  Jones.  John 
Hunter,  who  was  constantly  engaged  in  the  search  and 
consideration  of  new  facts,  described  what  was  passing 
iu  his  mind  by  a  remarkable  illustration: — he  said  to 


170  LITERART  CHARACTER. 

Abernethy,  "My  mind  is  like  a  bee-hive."  A  simile 
wldch  was  singularly  correct ;  "  for,"  observes  Abernethy, 
"  in  the  midst  of  buzz  and  apparent  confusion  there  was 
great  order,  regularity  of  structure,  and  abundant  food, 
collected  with  incessant  industry  from  the  choicest  stores 
of  nature."  Thus  one  man  of  genius  is  the  ablest  com- 
mentator on  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  another.  When 
we  reflect  on  the  magnitude  of  the  labours  of  Cicero  and 
the  elder  Pliny,  on  those  of  Erasmus,  Petrarch,  Baronius, 
Lord  Bacon,  Usher,  and  Bayle,  we  seem  at  the  base  of 
these  monuments  of  study,  we  seem  scarcely  awake  to 
admire.  These  were  the  laborious  instructors  of  mankind  ; 
their  age  has  closed. 

Yet  let  not  those  other  artists  of  the  mind,  who  work 
in  the  airy  looms  of  fancy  and  wit,  imagine  that  they  are 
weaving  their  webs,  without  the  direction  of  a  principle, 
and  without  a  secret  habit  which  they  have  acquired,  and 
which  some  have  imagined,  by  its  quickness  and  facility, 
to  be  an  instinct.  "  Habit,"  says  Reid,  "  differs  from 
instinct,  not  in  its  nature,  but  in  its  origin ;  the  last  being 
natural,  the  first  acquired."  AYliat  we  are  accustomed 
to  do,  gives  a  facility  and  proneness  to  do  on  like  oc- 
casions ;  and  there  may  be  even  an  art,  unperceived  by 
themselves,  in  opening  and  pursuing  a  scene  of  pure 
invention,  and  even  in  the  happiest  turns  of  wit.  One 
who  had  all  the  experience  of  such  an  ai'tist  has  employed 
the  very  terms  we  have  used,  of  "mechanical"  and 
"  habitual."  "  Be  assured,"  says  Goldsmith,  "  that  wit 
is  in  some  measure  mechanical ;  and  that  a  man  long 
habituated  to  catch  at  even  its  resemblance,  will  at  last 
be  happy  enough  to  possess  the  substance.  By  a  long 
habit  of  writing  he  acquires  a  justness  of  thinking,  and 
a  mastery  of  manner  which  holiday  writers,  even  with 
ten  times  his  genius,  may  vainly  attempt  to  equal."  The 
wit  of  Butler  was  not  extemporaneous,  but  painfully 
elaborated  from  notes  which  he  incessantly  accumulated  ; 


DREAMS.  171 

and  the  familiar  rime  of  Berni,  the  burlesque  poet,  his 
existing  manuscripts  will  prove,  were  produced  by  per- 
petual re-touches.  Even  in  the  sublime  efforts  of  im- 
agination, this  art  of  meditation  may  be  practised ;  and 
Alfieri  has  shown  us,  that  in  those  energetic  tragic  dra- 
mas which  were  often  produced  in  a  state  of  enthusiasm, 
he  pursued  a  regiilated  process.  "  AU  my  tragedies 
have  been  composed  three  times ;"  and  he  describes  the 
three  stages  of  conception,  development,  and  versifying. 
"After  these  three  operations,  I  proceed,  like  other  au- 
thors, to  publish,  correct,  or  amend," 

"  All  is  habit  in  mankind,  even  virtue  itself !"  exclaimed 
Metastasio;  and  we  may  add,  even  the  meditations  of 
genius.  Some  of  its  boldest  conceptions  are  indeed  for- 
tuitous, starting  up  and  vanishing  almost  in  the  percep- 
tion; like  that  giant  form,  sometimes  seen  amidst  the 
glaciers,  afar  from  the  opposite  traveller,  moving  as  he 
moves,  stopping  as  he  stops,  yet,  in  a  moment  lost,  and 
perhaps  never  more  seen,  although  but  his  own  reflection  ! 
Often  in  the  still  obscurity  of  the  night,  the  ideas,  the 
studies,  the  whole  history  of  the  day,  is  acted  over 
again.  There  are  probably  few  mathematicians  who 
have  not  dreamed  of  an  interesting  problem,  observes 
Professor  Dugald  Stewart,  In  these  vivid  scenes  we 
are  often  so  completely  converted  into  spectators,  that 
a  great  poetical  contemporary  of  our  country  thinks  that 
even  his  dreams  should  not  pass  away  unnoticed,  and 
keeps  what  he  calls  a  register  of  nocturnals,  Tasso 
has  recorded  some  of  his  poetical  dreams,  which  were 
often  disturbed  by  waking  himself  in  repeating  a  verse 
aloud,  "This  night  I  awaked  with  this  verse  in  my 
mouth — 

E  i  duo  che  manda  U  nero  adusio  suolo. 

The  two,  the  dark  and  burning  soil  has  sent." 

He  discovered  that  the  epithet  black  was  not  suitable; 


172  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

"I  again  fell  asleep,  and  in  a  dream  I  read  in  Strabo 
that  the  sand  of  Ethiopia  and  Arabia  is  extremely  white^ 
and  this  morning  I  have  found  the  place.  You  see  what 
learned  dreams  I  have." 

But  incidents  of  this  nature  are  not  peculiar  to  this 
great  bard.  The  iniprovvisatori  poets,  we  are  told,  can- 
not sleep  after  an  evening's  effusion ;  the  rhymes  are  still 
ringing  in  their  ears,  and  imagination,  if  they  have  any, 
will  still  haunt  them.  Their  previous  state  of  excitement 
breaks  into  the  calm  of  sleep ;  for,  like  the  ocean,  when 
its  swell  is  subsiding,  the  waves  still  heave  and  beat. 
A  poet,  whether  a  Milton  or  a  Blackmore,  will  ever  find 
that  his  muse  will  visit  his  "  slumbers  nightly."  His 
fate  is  much  harder  than  that  of  the  great  minister.  Sir 
Robert  Walpole,  who  on  retiring  to  rest  could  throw 
aside  his  political  intrigues  with  his  clothes;  but  Sir 
Robert,  to  judge  by  his  portrait  and  anecdotes  of  him, 
had  a  sleekiness  and  good-humour,  and  an  unalterable 
equanimity  of  countenance,  not  the  portion  of  men  of 
genius :  indeed  one  of  these  has  regretted  that  his  sleep 
was  so  profound  as  not  to  be  interrupted  by  dreams; 
from  a  throng  of  fantastic  ideas  he  imagined  that  he 
could  have  drawn  new  sources  of  poetic  imagery.  The 
historian  De  Thou  was  one  of  those  great  literary  char- 
acters who,  all  his  life,  was  preparing  to  write  the  liistory 
which  he  afterwards  composed  ;  omitting  nothing,  in  his 
travels  and  hif  embassies,  which  went  to  the  formation  of 
a  great  man.  De  Thou  has  given  a  very  curious  account 
of  his  dreams.  Such  was  his  passion  for  study,  and  his 
ardent  admiration  of  the  great  men  whom  he  conversed 
with,  that  he  often  imagined  in  his  sleep  that  he  was 
travelling  in  Italy,  Germany,  and  in  England,  where  he 
saw  and  consulted  tlu;  learned,  and  examined  their  curious 
libraries.  He  had  all  his  lifetime  these  literary  dreams, 
but  more  particularly  in  his  travels  they  reflected  these 
images  of    the  day. 


VALUE   OF  MEDITATION.  173 

If  memory  do  not  chain  down  these  hurrying  fading 
children  of  the  imagination,  and 

Snatch  the  faithless  fugitives  to  light 

•with  the  beams  of  the  morning,  the  mind  suddenly  finds 
itself  forsaken  and  solitary.*  Rousseau  has  uttered  a  com- 
plaint on  this  occasion.  Full  of  enthusiasm,  he  devoted 
to  the  subject  of  his  thoughts,  as  was  his  custom,  the 
long  sleepless  intervals  of  his  nights.  Meditating  in 
bed  with  his  eyes  closed,  he  turned  over  his  periods  in  a 
tumult  of  ideas ;  but  when  he  rose  and  had  dressed,  all 
was  vanished ;  and  when  he  sat  down  to  his  breakfast  he 
had  nothing  to  write.  Thus  genius  has  its  vespers  and 
its  vigils,  as  well  as  its  matins,  which  we  have  been  so 
often  told  are  the  true  hours  of  its  inspiration;  but 
every  hour  may  be  full  of  inspiration  for  him  who  knows 
to  meditate.  No  man  was  more  practised  in  this  art  of 
the  mind  than  Pope,  and  even  the  night  was  not  an 
unregarded  portion  of  his  poetical  existence,  not  less 
than  with  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  who  tells  us  how  often  he 
found  the  use  of  recollecting  the  ideas  of  what  he  had 
considered  in  the  day  after  he  had  retired  to  bed,  encom- 
passed by  the  silence  and  obscurity  of  the  night.  Sleep- 
less nights  are  the  portion  of  genius  when  engaged  in 
its  work ;  the  train  of  reasoning  is  still  pursued  ;  the 
images  of  fancy  catch  a  fresh  illumination ;  and  even  a 
happy  expression  shall  linger  in  the  ear  of  him  who 
turns  about  for  the  soft  composure  to  which  his  troubled 
spirit  cannot  settle. 

But  while  with  genius  so  much  seems  fortuitous,  in  its 
great  operations  the  march  of  the  mind  appears  regular, 

*  One  of  the  most  extraordinary  instances  of  inspiration  in  dreams 
13  told  of  Tartini,  the  Italian  musician,  whose  "Devil's  Sonata"  is 
well  known  to  musicians.  He  dreamed  that  the  father  of  evil  played 
this  piece  to  him,  and  upon  waking  he  put  it  on  paper.  It  is  a  strange 
wild  performance,  possessing  great  originality  and  vigour. — Ed. 


174  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

and  requires  preparation.  The  intellectual  faculties  are 
not  always  co-existent,  or  do  not  always  act  simultane- 
ously. Whenever  any  particular  faculty  is  highly  active, 
while  the  others  are  languid,  the  work,  as  a  work  of 
genius,  may  be  very  deficient.  Hence  the  faculties,  in 
whatever  degree  they  exist,  are  unquestionably  enlarged 
by  meditation.  It  seems  trivial  to  observe  that  medita- 
tion should  precede  composition,  but  we  are  not  always 
aware  of  its  importance ;  the  truth  is,  that  it  is  a  diffi- 
culty unless  it  be  a  habit.  We  write,  and  we  find  we 
have  written  ill ;  we  re- write,  and  feel  we  have  written 
well :  in  the  second  act  of  composition  we  have  acqxiired 
the  necessary  meditation.  Still  we  rarely  carry  on  our 
meditation  so  far  as  its  practice  would  enable  us.  Many 
works  of  mediocrity  might  have  approached  to  excellence, 
had  this  art  of  the  mind  been  exercised.  Many  volatile 
writers  might  have  reached  even  to  deep  thinking,  had 
they  bestowed  a  day  of  meditation  before  a  day  of  com- 
position, and  thus  engendered  their  thoughts.  Many 
productions  of  genius  have  originally  been  enveloped  in 
feebleness  and  obscurity,  which  have  only  been  brought 
to  perfection  by  repeated  acts  of  the  mind.  There  is  a 
maxim  of  Confucius,  which  in  the  translation  seems 
quaint,  but  which  is  pregnant  with  sense — 

Labour,  but  slight  not  meditation ; 
Meditate,  but  slight  not  labour. 

Few  works  of  magnitude  presented  themselves  at  once, 
in  their  extent  and  with  their  associations,  to  their 
authors.  Two  or  three  striking  circumstances,  unob- 
served before,  are  perhaps  all  wliich  the  man  of  genius 
perceives.  It  is  in  revolving  the  subject  that  the  whole 
mind  becomes  gradually  agitated ;  as  a  summer  land- 
scape, at  the  break  of  day,  is  wrapped  in  mist :  at  first, 
the  sun  strikes  on  a  single  object,  but  the  light  and 
warmth  increasing,  the  whole  scene  glows  in  the  noonday 


VALUE    OF    MEDITATION.  175 

of  imagination.  How  beautifully  this  state  of  the  mind, 
in  the  progress  of  composition,  is  described  by  Dryden, 
alluding  to  his  work,  "  when  it  was  only  a  confused  mass 
of  thoughts,  tumbling  over  one  another  in  the  dark ; 
when  the  fancy  was  yet  in  its  first  work,  moving  the 
sleeping  images  of  things  towards  the  light,  there  to  be 
distinguished,  and  then  either  to  be  chosen  or  rejected 
by  the  judgment !"  At  that  moment,  he  adds,  "  I  was  in 
that  eagerness  of  imagination  which,  by  over-pleasing 
fanciful  men,  flatters  them  into  the  danger  of  writing." 
Gibbon  tells  us  of  his  history,  "  At  the  onset  all  was 
dark  and  doubtful ;  even  the  title  of  the  work,  the  true 
era  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  empire,  &c.  I  was 
often  tempted  to  cast  away  the  labour  of  seven  years." 
Winckelmann  was  long  lost  in  composing  his  "  History 
of  Art ;"  a  hundred  fruitless  attempts  were  made,  before 
he  could  discover  a  plan  amidst  the  labyrinth.  Slight 
conceptions  kindle  finished  works.  A  lady  asking  for  a 
few  verses  on  rural  topics  of  the  Abbe  de  Lille,  his 
specimens  pleased,  and  sketches  heaped  on  sketches  pro- 
duced "  Les  Jardins."  In  writing  the  "  Pleasures  of 
Memory,"  as  it  happened  with  "  The  Rape  of  the  Lock," 
the  poet  at  first  proposed  a  simple  description  in  a  few 
lines,  till  conducted  by  meditation  the  perfect  composi- 
tion of  several  years  closed  in  that  fine  poem.  That 
still  valuable  work  VArt  de  P^nser  of  the  Port-Royal, 
was  originally  projected  to  teach  a  young  nobleman  all 
that  was  practically  useful  in  the  art  of  logic  in  a  few 
days,  and  was  intended  to  have  been  written  in  one 
morning  by  the  great  Arnauld ;  but  to  that  profound 
thinker  so  many  new  ideas  crowded  in  that  slight  task, 
that  he  was  compelled  to  call  in  his  friend  Nicolle  ;  and 
thus  a  few  projected  pages  closed  in  a  volume  so  ex- 
cellent, that  our  elegant  metaphysician  has  recently  de- 
clared, that  "  it  is  hardly  possible  to  estimate  the  merits 
too  Wghly,"     Pemberton,  who  knew  Newton  intimately, 


176  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

informs  iis  that  his  Treatise  on  Natural  Philosophy,  full 
of  a  variety  of  profound  inventions,  was  composed  by 
him  from  scarcely  any  other  materials  than  the  fe%o 
'propositions  he  had  set  down  several  years  before,  and 
which  having  resumed,  occupied  him  in  writing  one 
year  and  a  half  A  curious  circumstance  has  been  pre- 
served in  the  life  of  the  other  immortal  man  in  phi- 
losophy, Lord  Bacon.  When  young,  he  wrote  a  letter  to 
Father  Fulgentio  concerning  an  Essay  of  his,  to  which 
he  gave  the  title  of  "The  Greatest  Birth  of  Time,"  a 
title  which  he  censures  as  too  pompous.  The  Essay 
itself  is  lost,  but  it  was  the  first  outline  of  that  great 
design  which  he  afterwards  pursued  and  finished  in  his 
"  Instauration  of  the  Sciences."  Locke  himself  has  in- 
formed us,  that  his  great  work  on  "  The  Human  Under- 
standing," when  he  first  put  pen  to  paper,  he  thought 
"  would  have  been  contained  in  one  sheet,  but  that  the 
farther  he  went  on,  the  larger  prospect  he  had."  In  this 
manner  it  would  be  beautiful  to  trace  the  history  of  the 
human  mind,  and  observe  how  a  Newton  and  a  Bacon 
and  a  Locke  were  proceeding  for  thirty  years  together, 
in  accumulating  truth  upon  truth,  and  finally  building 
up  these  fabrics  of  their  invention. 

Were  it  possible  to  collect  some  thoughts  of  great 
thinkers,  which  were  never  written,  we  should  discover 
vivid  conceptions,  and  an  originality  they  never  dared  to 
pursue  in  their  works  !  Artists  have  this  advantage  over 
authors,  that  their  virgin  fancies,  their  chance  felicities, 
which  labour  cannot  afterwards  produce,  are  constantly 
perpetuated ;  and  those  "  studies,"  as  they  are  called,  are 
as  precious  to  posterity  as  their  more  complete  designs.  In 
literature  we  possess  one  remarkable  evidence  of  these 
fortuitous  thoughts  of  genius.  Pope  and  Swift,  being  in 
the  country  together,  observed,  that  if  contemplative 
men  were  to  notice  "the  thoughts  which  suddenly 
present  themselves  to  their  minds  when  walking  in  the 


FIRST   THOUGHTS.  177 

flelds,  &c.,  they  might  find  many  as  well  worth  preserv 
ing  as  some  of  their  more  deliberate  reflections."  They 
made  a  trial,  and  agreed  to  write  down  such  involuntary 
thoughts  as  occurred  during  their  stay  there.  These 
furnished  out  the  "  Thoughts "  in  Pope's  and  Swift's 
Miscellanies.*  Among  Lord  Bacon's  Remains,  we  find  a 
paper  entitled  "  Sudden  TJioughts,  set  down  for  Profit." 
At  all  hours,  by  the  side  of  Voltaire's  bed,  or  on  his 
table,  stood  his  pen  and  ink  with  slips  of  paper.  The 
margins  of  his  books  were  covered  with  his  "sudden 
thoughts."  Cicero,  in  reading,  constantly  took  notes 
and  made  comments.  There  is  an  art  of  reading,  as  well 
as  an  art  of  thinking,  and  an  art  of  writing. 

The  art  of  meditation  may  be  exercised  at  all  hours, 
and  in  all  places  ;  and  men  of  genius,  in  their  walks,  at 
table,  and  amidst  assemblies,  turning  the  eye  of  the  mind 
inwards,  can  form  an  artificial  solitude ;  retired  amidst  a 
crowd,  calm,  amidst  distraction,  and  wise  amidst  folly. 
When  Domenichino  was  reproached  for  his  dilatory 
habits,  in  not  finishing  a  great  picture  for  which  he  had 
contracted,  his  reply  described  this  method  of  study : 
Eh  !  lo  la  sto  continuamente  dipingendo  entro  di  me — I 
am  continually  painting  it  within  myself.  Hogarth,  with 
an  eye  always  awake  to  the  ridiculous,  would  catch  a 
character  on  his  thumb-nail,  Leonardo  da  Vinci  has  left 
a  great  number  of  little  books  which  he  usually  carried 
in  his  girdle,  that  he  might  instantly  sketch  whatever  he 
wished  to  recal  to  his  recollection  ;  and  Amoretti  dis- 
covered, that,  in  these  light  sketches,  this  fine  genius 
was  foiTning  a  system  of  physiognomy  which  he 
frequently  inculcated  to  his  pupils.f     Haydn  carefully 

♦This  anecdote  is  found  in  Ruflfbead's  "Life  of  Pope,"  evidently 
given  by  "Warburton,  as  was  everything  of  personal  knowledge  in  that 
tasteless  volume  of  a  mere  lawyer,  who  presumed  to  wTite  the  life  of  a 
poet. 

f  A  collection  of  sixty-four  of  these  sketches  were  published  at 
12 


178  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

noted  down  in  a  pocket-book  the  passages  and  ideas 
which  came  to  him  in  his  walks  or  amid  company.  Some 
of  the  great  actions  of  men  of  this  habit  of  mind  were 
first  meditated  on  amidst  the  noise  of  a  convivial  party, 
or  the  music  of  a  concert.  The  victory  of  Waterloo 
might  have  been  organized  in  the  ball-room  at  Brussels  : 
and  thus  Rodney,  at  the  table  of  Lord  Sandwich,  while 
the  bottle  was  briskly  circulating,  being  observed  ar- 
ranging bits  of  cork,  and  his  solitary  amusement  having 
excited  inquiry,  said  that  he  was  practising  a  plan  to 
annihilate  an  enemy's  fleet.  This  proved  to  be  that 
discovery  of  breaking  the  line,  which  the  happy  audacity 
of  the  hero  afterwards  executed.  What  situation  is 
more  common  than  a  sea-voyage,  where  nothing  presents 
itself  to  the  reflections  of  most  men  than  irl^ome  observa- 
tions on  the  desert  of  waters  ?  But  the  constant  exercise 
of  the  mind  by  habitual  practice  is  the  privilege  of  a 
commanding  genius,  and,  in  a  similar  situation,  we 
discover  Cicero  and  Sir  William  Jones  acting  alike. 
Amidst  the  Oriental  seas,  in  a  voyage  of  12,000  miles, 
the  mind  of  Jones  kindled  with  delightful  enthusiasm, 
and  he  has  perpetuated  those  elevating  feelings  in  his 
discourse  to  the  Asiatic  Society ;  so  Cicero  on  board  a 
ship,  sailing  slowly  along  the  coast,  passing  by  a  town 
where  his  friend  Trebatius  resided,  wrote  a  work  which 
the  other  had  expressed  a  wish  to  possess,  and  of  which 
wish  the  view  of  the  town  had  reminded  him. 

To  this  habit  of  continuity  of  attention,  tracing 
the  first  simple  idea  to  its  remoter  consequences, 
the  philosophical  genius  owes  many  of  its  discoveries. 
It  was  one  evening  in  the  cathedral  of  Pisa  that  Galileo 
observed  the  vi])rations  of  a  brass  lustre  pendent  from 
the  vaulted  roof,  which  had  been  left  swinging  by  one  of 

Paris  in  H.'iO.  Tliey  are  remarkable  as  delineations  of  mental 
character  in  feature  as  strongly  felt  as  if  done  under  the  direction  of 
Lavator  himself. — Ed. 


GREAT  DISCOYERIES.  179 

the  vergers.  The  habitual  meditation  of  genius  com- 
bined with  an  ordinary  accident  a  new  idea  of  science, 
and  hence  conceived  the  invention  of  measuring  time  by 
tlie  medium  of  a  penduhmi.  Who  but  a  genius  of  tliis 
order,  sitting  in  his  orchard,  and  observing  the  descent  of 
an  apple,  could  have  discovered  a  new  quality  in  matter, 
and  have  ascertained  the  laws  of  atti'action,  by  perceiv- 
ing that  the  same  causes  might  perpetuate  the  regular 
motions  of  the  planetary  system ;  who  but  a  genius  of 
this  order,  while  viewing  boys  blowing  soap-bladders, 
could  have  discovered  the  properties  of  light  and  colours, 
and  then  anatomised  a  ray?  Franklin,  on  board  a 
ship,  observing  a  partial  stillness  in  the  waves  when  they 
threw  down  water  which  had  been  used  for  culinary 
purposes,  by  the  same  principles  of  meditation  was  led 
to  the  discovery  of  the  wonderful  property  in  oil  of 
calming  the  agitated  ocean ;  and  many  a  ship  has  been 
preserved  in  tempestuous  weather,  or  a  landing  facili- 
tated on  a  dangerous  surf,  by  this  solitary  meditation 
of  genius. 

Thus  meditation  draws  out  of  the  most  simple  truths 
the  strictness  of  philosophical  demonstration,  convert- 
ing even  the  amusements  of  school-boys,  or  the  most 
ordinary  domestic  occurrences,  into  the  principle  of  a 
new  science.  The  phenomenon  of  galvanism  was  fa- 
miliar to  students ;  yet  was  there  but  one  man  of  genius 
who  could  take  advantage  of  an  accident,  give  it  his 
name,  and  fix  it  as  a  science.  It  was  while  lying  in  his 
bath,  but  still  meditating  on  the  means  to  detect  the 
fraud  of  the  goldsmith  who  had  made  Hiero's  crown, 
that  the  most  extraordinary  philosopher  of  antiquity 
w^as  led  to  the  investigation  of  a  series  of  propositions 
demonstrated  in  the  two  books  of  Archimedes,  De  insi- 
dentihus  influido,  still  extant ;  and  which  a  great  mathe- 
matician admires  both  for  the  strictness  and  elegance  of 
the  demonstrations.     To  as  minute  a  domestic  occuiTence 


180  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

as  Galvani's  we  owe  the  steam-engine.  When  the  Mar- 
quis of  Worcester  was  a  State  prisoner  in  the  Tower,  he 
one  day  observed,  while  his  meal  was  preparing  in  his 
apartment,  that  the  cover  of  the  vessel  being  tight,  was, 
by  the  expansion  of  the  steam,  suddenly  forced  oif,  and 
driven  up  the  chimney.  His  inventive  mind  was  led  on 
in  a  train  of  thought  with  reference  to  the  practical  ap- 
plication of  steam  as  a  first  mover.  His  observations, 
obscurely  exhibited  in  his  "  Century  of  Inventions," 
were  successively  wrought  out  by  the  meditations  of 
others,  and  an  incident,  to  which  one  can  hardly  make 
a  formal  reference  without  a  risible  emotion,  terminated 
in  the  noblest  instance  of  mechanical  power. 

Into  the  stillness  of  meditation  the  mind  of  genius 
must  be  frequently  thrown ;  it  is  a  kind  of  darkness 
which  hides  fi'om  us  all  surrounding  objects,  even  in  the 
light  of  day.  This  is  the  first  state  of  existence  in  genius. 
In  Cicero's  "  Treatise  on  Old  Age,"  we  find  Cato  admir- 
ing Caius  Sulpitius  Gallus,  who,  when  he  sat  down  to 
write  in  the  morning,  was  surprised  by  the  evening; 
and  when  he  took  up  his  pen  in  the  evening,  was  sur- 
prised by  the  appearance  of  the  morning.  Socrates 
sometimes  remained  a  whole  day  in  immovable  medita- 
tion, his  eyes  and  countenance  directed  to  one  spot,  as  if 
in  the  stillness  of  death.  La  Fontaine,  when  writing  his 
comic  tales,  has  been  observed  early  in  the  morning  and 
late  in  the  evening  in  the  same  recumbent  posture  under 
the  same  tree.  This  quiescent  state  is  a  sort  of  enthu- 
siasm, and  renders  everything  that  surrounds  us  as  dis- 
tant as  if  an  immense  interval  separated  us  from  the 
scene.  Poggius  has  told  us  of  Dante,  that  he  indulged 
his  meditations  more  strongly  than  any  man  he  knew ; 
for  when  deeply  busied  in  reading,  he  seemed  to  live 
only  in  his  ideas.  Once  the  poet  went  to  view  a  public 
procession;  having  entered  a booksellei"'s  shop,  and  taken 
up  a  book,  he  sunk  into  a  reverie ;  on  his  return  he  de- 


ABSTRACTION  OF  MIND.  181 

clared  that  he  had  neither  seen  nor  heard  a  single  occur- 
rence in  the  public  exhibition,  which  had  passed  un- 
observed before  him.  It  has  been  told  of  a  modern  as- 
tronomer, that  one  summer  night,  when  he  was  with- 
drawing to  his  chamber,  the  brightness  of  the  heavens 
showed  a  phenomenon :  he  passed  the  Avhole  night  in 
observing  it ;  and  when  they  came  to  him  early  in  the 
morning,  and  found  him  in  the  same  attitude,  he  said, 
like  one  who  had  been  recollecting  his  thoughts  for  a 
few  moments,  "  It  must  be  thus ;  but  I'll  go  to  bed  be- 
fore it  is  late."  He  had  gazed  the  entire  nio^ht  in  medita- 
tion,  and  was  not  aware  of  it.  Abernethy  has  finely 
painted  the  situation  of  Newton  in  this  state  of  mind. 
I  will  not  change  his  words,  for  his  words  are  his  feelings. 
"  It  was  this  power  of  mind — which  can  contemplate 
the  greatest  number  of  facts  or  propositions  with  ac- 
curacy— that  so  eminently  distinguished  Newton  from 
other  men.  It  was  this  power  that  enabled  him  to  ar- 
ransre  the  whole  of  a  treatise  in  his  thoughts  before  he 
committed  a  single  idea  to  paper.  In  the  exercise  of 
this  power,  he  was  known  occasionally  to  have  passed 
a  whole  night  or  day,  entii'ely  inattentive  to  surround- 
ing objects." 

There  is  nothing  incredible  in  the  stories  related  of 
some  who  have  experienced  this  entranced  state  in  study, 
where  the  mind,  deliciously  inebriated  with  the  object  it 
contemplates,  feels  nothing,  from  the  excess  of  feeling,  as 
a  philosopher  well  describes  it.  The  impressions  from 
our  exterior  sensations  are  often  suspended  by  great 
mental  excitement.  Archimedes,  involved  in  the  investiga- 
tion of  mathematical  truth,  and  the  painters  Protogenes 
and  Parmegiano,  found  their  senses  locked  up  as  it  were 
in  meditation,  so  as  to  be  incapable  of  withdrawing 
themselves  from  their  work,  even  in  the  midst  of  the 
terrors  and  storming  of  the  place  by  the  enemy.  Marino 
was  so  absorbed  in  the  composition  of  his  "  Adonis," 


182  LITERARY   CHARACTER 

that  he  suffered  his  leg  to  be  burned  before  the  painful 
sensation  grew  stronger  than  the  intellectual  pleasure  of 
his  imagination.  Monsieur  Thomas,  a  modern  French 
writer,  and  an  intense  thinker,  would  sit  for  hours 
against  a  hedge,  composing  with  a  low  voice,  taking  the 
same  pinch  of  snuff  for  half  an  hour  together  without 
being  aAvare  that  it  had  long  disappeared.  When  he 
quitted  his  apartment,  after  prolonging  his  studies  there, 
a  visible  alteration  was  observed  in  his  person,  and  the 
agitation  of  his  recent  thoughts  was  still  traced  in  his 
air  and  manner.  With  eloquent  truth  Buffon  described 
those  reveries  of  the  student,  which  compress  his  day, 
and  mark  the  hours  by  the  sensations  of  minutes !  "  In- 
vention depends  on  patience :  contemplate  your  subject 
long  ;  it  will  gradually  unfold  till  a  sort  of  electric  spark 
convulses  for  a  moment  the  brain,  and  spreads  down  to 
the  very  heart  a  glow  of  irritation.  Then  come  the 
luxuries  of  genius,  the  true  hours  for  production  and 
composition — hours  so  delightful,  that  I  have  spent 
twelve  or  fourteen  successively  at  my  writing-desk,  and 
still  been  in  a  state  of  pleasure."  Bishop  Home,  whose 
literary  feelings  were  of  the  most  delicate  and  lively 
kind,  has  beautifully  recorded  them  in  his  progress 
through  a  favourite  and  lengthened  work — his  Com- 
mentary on  the  Psalms.  He  alludes  to  himself  in  the 
third  person  ;  yet  who  but  the  self-painter  could  have 
caught  those  delicious  emotions  which  are  so  evanescent 
in  the  deep  occupation  of  pleasant  studies  ?  "  He  arose 
fresh  in  the  morning  to  his  task ;  the  silence  of  the  night 
invited  hiin  to  pursue  it ;  and  he  can  truly  say,  that 
food  and  rest  were  not  preferred  before  it.  Every  part 
improved  infinitely  upon  his  acquaintance  with  it,  and  no 
one  gave  him  uneasiness  but  the  last,  for  then  he  grieved 
that  his  work  was  done." 

This  eager  deliglvt  of  pursuing  study,  this  impatience 
of  interruption,  and  this  exultation  in  progress,  are  alike 


ENTHUSIASM   OF   GENIUS.  183 

finely  described  by  Milton  in  a  letter  to  his  friend 
Diodati. 

"  Such  is  the  character  of  my  mind,  that  no  delay, 
none  of  the  ordinary  cessations  for  rest  or  otherwise, 
I  had  nearly  said  care  or  thinking  of  the  very  subject, 
can  hold  me  back  from  being  hurried  on  to  the  destined 
point,  and  from  completing  the  great  circuit,  as  it  were, 
of  the  study  in  which  I  am  engaged." 

Such  is  the  picture  of  genius  viewed  in  the  stillness  of 
MEDITATION ;  but  there  is  yet  a  more  excited  state,  when, 
as  if  consciousness  were  mixing  with  its  reveries,  in  the 
allusion  of  a  scene,  of  a  person,  of  a  passion,  the  emotions 
of  the  soul  affect  even  the  organs  of  sense.  This  excite- 
ment is  experienced  when  the  poet  in  the  excellence  of 
invention,  and  the  philosopher  in  the  force  of  intellect, 
alike  share  in  the  hours  of  inspiration  and  the  enthusiasm 
of  genius. 


CHAPTER    XII, 

The  enthusiasm  of  genius. — A  state  of  mind  resembling  a  waking 
dream  distinct  from  reyerie. — The  ideal  presence  distinguished  from 
the  real  presence. — The  senses  are  really  affected  in  the  ideal  world 
proved  by  a  variety  of  instances. — Of  the  rapture  or  sensation  of 
deep  study  in  art,  in  science,  and  literature. — Of  perturbed  feelings 
in  delirium. — In  estreme  endurance  of  attention. — And  in  visionary 
illusions. — Enthusiasts  in  literature  and  art — of  their  self-immola- 
tions. 

WE  left  the  man  of  genius  in  the  stillness  of  medita- 
tion. We  have  now  to  pursue  his  history  through 
that  more  excited  state  which  occurs  in  the  most  active 
operations  of  genius,  and  which  the  term  reverie  inade- 
quately indicates.  Metaphysical  distinctions  but  ill  de- 
scribe it,  and  popular  language  affords  no  terms  for  those 


184  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

faculties  and  feelings  which  escape  the  observation  of  the 
multitude  not  affected  by  the  phenomenon. 

The  illusion  produced  by  a  drama  on  persons  of  great 
sensibility,  when  all  the  senses  are  awakened  by  a  mix- 
ture of  reality  with  imagination,  is  the  effect  experienced 
by  men  of  genius  in  their  own  vivified  ideal  world. 
Real  emotions  are  raised  by  fiction.  In  a  scene,  ap- 
parently passing  in  their  presence,  where  the  whole  train 
of  circumstances  succeeds  in  all  the  continuity  of  nature, 
and  where  a  sort  of  real  existences  appear  to  rise  up 
before  them,  they  themselves  become  spectators  or 
actors.  Their  sympathies  are  excited,  and  the  exterior 
organs  of  sense  are  visibly  affected — they  even  break 
out  into  speech,  and  often  accompany  their  speech  with 
gestures. 

In  this  equivocal  state  the  enthusiast  of  genius  pro- 
duces his  masterpieces.  This  waking  dream  is  distinct 
from  reverie,  where,  our  thoughts  wandering  without 
connexion,  the  faint  impressions  are  so  evanescent  as  to 
occur  without  even  being  recollected.  A  day  of  reverie 
is  beautifully  painted  by  Rousseau  as  distinct  from  a  day 
of  thinking  :  "  J'ai  des  journees  delicieuses,  errant  sans 
souci,  sans  projet,  sans  affaire,  de  bois  en  bois,  et  de 
rocher  en  rocher,  revant  tovjours  et  ne  pensant  point.'''' 
Far  different,  however,  is  one  closely-pursued  act  of 
meditation,  carrying  the  enthusiast  of  genius  beyond  the 
precinct  of  actual  existence.  The  act  of  contemplation 
then  creates  the  thing  contemplated.  He  is  now  the 
busy  actor  in  a  world  which  he  himself  only  views; 
alone,  he  hears,  he  sees,  he  touches,  he  laughs,  he  weeps ; 
his  brows  and  lips,  and  his  very  limbs  move. 

Poets  and  even  painters,  who,  as  Lord  Bacon  describes 
witches,  "  are  imaginative,"  have  often  involuntarily 
betrayed,  in  the  act  of  composition,  those  gestures  which 
accompany  this  enthusiasm.  Witness  Domenichino  en- 
raging himself  that  he  might  portray  anger.     Nor  were 


ACTORS  OF  GENIUS.  185 

these  creative  gestures  quite  unknown  to  Quintilian,  who 
has  nobly  compared  them  to  the  lashings  of  the  lion's 
tail,  rousing  him  to  combat.  Actors  of  genius  have  ac- 
customed themselves  to  walk  on  the  stage  for  an  hour 
before  the  curtain  was  drawn,  that  they  might  fill  their 
minds  with  all  the  pliantoms  of  the  drama,  and  so  sus- 
pend all  communion  with  the  external  world.  The  great 
actress  of  our  age,  during  representation,  always  had 
the  door  of  her  dressing-room  open,  that  she  might  listen 
to,  and  if  possible  Avatch  the  whole  pei'formance,  with 
the  same  attention  as  was  experienced  by  the  spectators. 
By  this  means  she  possessed  herself  of  all  the  illusion 
of  the  scene  ;  and  when  she  herself  entered  on  the  stage, 
her  dreaming  thoughts  then  brightened  into  a  vision, 
where  the  perceptions  of  the  soul  were  as  firm  and  clear 
as  if  she  were  really  the  Constance  or  the  Katherine 
whom  she  only  represented.* 

Aware  of  this  peculiar  faculty,  so  prevalent  in  the  more 
vivid  exercise  of  genius,  Lord  Kaimes  seems  to  have 
been  the  first  who,  in  a  work  on  criticism,  attempted  to 
name  tlie  ideal  presence^  to  distinguish  it  from  the  real 
presence  of  things.  '  It  has  been  called  the  representative 
faculty,  the  imaginative  state,  and  many  other  states 
and  faculties.  Call  it  what  we  will,  no  term  opens  to  us 
the  invisible  mode  of  its  operations,  no  metaphysical 
definition  expresses  its  variable  nature.  Conscious  of 
the  existence  of  such  a  faculty,  our  critic  perceived  that 
the  conception  of  it  is  by  no  means  clear  when  described 
in  words. 

Has  not  the  difierence  between  an  actual  thing,  and  its 
image  in  a  glass,  perplexed  some  philosophers  ?  and  it  is 
well  known  how  far  the  ideal  philosophy  has  been  car- 
ried by  so  fine  a  genius  as  Bishop  Berkeley.  "  All  are 
pictures,   alike   painted   on   the   retina,   or   optical   sen- 

*  Tlie  lato  Mrs.  Siddoas.  She  herself  communicated  this  striking 
circumstance  to  me. 


186  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Borium !"  exclaimed  the  enthusiast  Barry,  who  only  saw 
pictures  in  nature,  and  nature  in  pictures.  This  faculty 
has  had  a  strange  influence  over  the  passionate  lovers  of 
statues.  We  find  unquestionable  evidence  of  the  vivid- 
ness of  the  representative  faculty,  or  the  ideal  presence, 
vying  with  that  of  reality.  Evelyn  has  described  one  of 
this  cast  of  mind,  in  the  librarian  of  the  Vatican,  who 
haunted  one  of  the  finest  collections  at  Rome.  To  these 
statues  he  would  frequently  talk  as  if  they  were  living 
persons,  often  kissing  and  embracing  them.  A  similar 
circumstance  might  be  recorded  of  a  man  of  distinguished 
talent  and  literature  among  ourselves.  Wondrous  stories 
are  told  of  the  amatorial  passion  for  marble  statues ;  but 
the  wonder  ceases,  and  the  truth  is  established,  when  the 
irresistible  ideal  presence  is  comprehended ;  the  visions 
which  now  bless  these  lovers  of  statues,  in  the  modern 
land  of  sculpture,  Italy,  had  acted  with  equal  force  in  an- 
cient Greece.  "The  Last  Judgment,"  the  stupendous 
ideal  presence  of  Michael  Angelo,  seems  to  have  com- 
municated itself  to  some  of  his  beholders :  "  As  I  stood 
before  this  picture,"  a  late  traveller  tells  us,  "  my  blood 
chilled  as  if  the  reality  were  before  me,  and  the  very 
sound  of  the  trumpet  seemed  to  pierce  my  ears." 

Cold  and  ban-en  tempers  without  imagination,  whose 
impressions  of  objects  never  rise  beyond  those  of  mem- 
ory and  reflection,  which  know  only  to  compare,  and  not 
to  excite,  will  smile  at  this  equivocal  state  of  the  ideal 
presence ;  yet  it  is  a  real  ©ne  to  the  enthusiast  of  genius, 
and  it  is  his  happiest  and  peculiar  condition.  Destitute 
of  this  faculty,  no  metaphysical  aid,  no  art  to  be  taught 
him,  no  mastery  of  talent,  will  avail  him :  unblest  with 
it,  the  votary  will  find  each  sacrifice  lying  cold  on 
the  altar,  for  no  accepting  flame  from  heaven  shall  kin- 
dle it. 

This  enthusiasm  indeed  can  only  be  discovered  by  men 
of  genius  themselves  ;  yet  when  most  under  its  influencCji. 


SENSITIVENESS.  187 

they  can  least  perceive  it,  as  the  eye  which  sees  all  things 
cannot  view  itself;  or,  rather,  such  an  attempt  would  be 
like  searching  for  the  principle  of  life,  which  were  it  found 
would  cease  to  be  life.  From  an  enchanted  man  we 
must  not  expect  a  narrative  of  his  enchantment ;  for  if 
he  could  speak  to  us  reasonably,  and  like  one  of  our- 
selves, in  that  case  he  would  be  a  man  in  a  state  of  dis- 
enchantment, and  then  would  perhaps  yield  us  no  better 
account  than  we  may  trace  by  our  own  observations. 

There  is,  however,  something  of  reality  in  this  state  of 
the  ideal  presence ;  for  the  most  familiar  instances  will 
show  how  the  nerves  of  each  external  sense  are  put  in 
motion  by  the  idea  of  the  object,  as  if  the  real  object  had 
been  presented  to  it.  The  difference  is  only  in  the  de- 
gree. The  senses  are  more  concerned  in  the  ideal  world 
than  at  first  appears.  The  idea  of  a  thing  will  make  us 
shudder ;  and  the  bare  imagination  of  it  will  often  pro- 
duce a  real  pain.  A  curious  consequence  may  be  deduced 
from  this  principle ;  Milton,  lingering  amid  the  fresh- 
ness of  nature  in  Eden,  felt  all  the  delights  of  those  ele- 
ments which  he  was  creating  ;•  his  nerves  moved  with  the 
images  which  excited  them.  The  fierce  and  wild  Dante, 
amidst  the  abysses  of  his  "Inferno,"  must  often  have 
been  startled  by  its  horrors,  and  often  left  his  bitter  and 
gloomy  spirit  in  the  stings  he  inflicted  on  the  great 
criminal.  The  moveable  nerves,  then,  of  the  man  of 
genius  are  a  reality ;  he  sees,  he  hears,  he  feels,  by  each. 
How  mysterious  to  us  is  the  operation  of  this  faculty  ! 

A  Homer  and  a  Richardson,*  like  nature,  open  a  vol- 
ume large  as  life  itself — embracing  a  ckcuit  of  human 
existence  !     This  state  of  the  mind  has  even  a  reality  in 

*  Richardson  assembles  a  family  about  him,  writing  down  what 
they  said,  seeing  their  very  manner  of  saying,  living  with  them  as 
often  and  as  long  as  he  wills — with  such  a  personal  unity,  that  an  in- 
genious lawyer  once  told  me  that  he  required  no  stronger  evidence  of 
a  fact  in  auy  court  of  law  than  a  circumstantial  scene  in  Richardson. 


188  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

it  for  the  generality  of  persons.  In  a  romance  or  a  drama, 
tears  are  often  seen  in  the  eyes  of  the  reader  or  the  spec- 
tator, who,  before  they  have  time  to  recollect  that  the 
whole  is  fictitious,  have  been  surprised  for  a  moment  by 
a  strong  conception  of  a  present  and  existing  scene. 

Can  we  doubt  of  the  reality  of  this  faculty,  when  the 
visible  and  outward  frame  of  the  man  of  genius  bean^ 
witness  to  its  presence  ?  When  Fielding  said,  "  I  do  not 
doubt  but  the  most  pathetic  and  aifecting  scenes  have 
been  writ  with  tears,"  he  probably  drew  that  discovery 
from  an  inverse  feeling  to  his  own.  Fielding  would  have 
been  gratified  to  have  confirmed  the  observation  by  facts 
which  never  reached  him.  Metastasio,  in  writing  the 
ninth  scene  of  the  second  act  of  his  Olympiad,  found 
himself  suddenly  moved — shedding  tears.  The  imagined 
Bori'ows  had  inspired  real  tears;  and  they  afterwards 
proved  contagious.  Had  our  poet  not  perpetuated  his 
surpi'ise  by  an  interesting  sonnet,  the  circumstance  had 
passed  away  with  the  emotion,  as  many  such  have.  Pope 
could  never  read  Priam's  speech  for  the  loss  of  his  son 
without  tears,  and  frequently  has  been  observed  to  weep 
over  tender  and  melancholy  passages.  Alfieri,  the  most 
energetic  poet  of  modern  times,  having  composed,  with- 
out a  pause,  the  whole  of  an  act,  noted  in  the  margin — 
"  Written  under  a  paroxysm  of  enthusiasm,  and  while 
shedding  a  flood  of  tears."  The  impressions  which  the 
frame  experiences  in  this  state,  leave  deeper  traces  behind 
them  than  those  of  reverie.  A  circumstance  accidentally 
preserved  has  informed  us  of  the  tremors  of  Dryden  after 
having  written  that  ode,*  which,  as  he  confessed,  he  had 
pursued  without  the  power  of  quitting  it ;  but  these  tre- 
mors were  not  unusual  with  him — for  in  the  preface  to  his 

*  This  famous  and  unparalleled  ode  was  probably  afterwards  re. 
touched ;  Vjut  Joseph  Warton  discovered  iu  it  the  rapidity  of  the 
thout^'hts,  and  the  glow  and  the  oxpreHsiveness  of  the  images;  •which 
are  the  certain  murks  of  ihofirat  sketch  of  a  master. 


EFFECT  OF  GREAT  WORKS.  189 

"  Tales,"  he  tell  us,  that  "  in  translating  Homer  he  foun>l 
greater  pleasure  than  in  Virgil ;  but  it  was  not  a  pleasure 
without  pain ;  the  continual  agitation  of  the  spirits  must 
needs  be  a  weakener  to  any  constitution,  especially  in  age, 
and  many  pauses  are  required  for  refreshment  betwixt  the 
heats." 

We  find  Metastasio,  like  others  of  the  brotherhood, 
susceptible  of  this  state,  complaining  of  his  sufferings 
during  the  poetical  aestias.  "  Wlien  I  apply  with  atten- 
tion, the  nerves  of  my  sensorium  are  put  into  a  violent 
tumult ;  I  grow  as  red  as  a  drunkard,  and  am  obliged  to 
quit  my  work."  When  Buffon  was  absorbed  on  a  subject 
which  presented  great  objections  to  his  opinions,  he  felt 
his  head  burn,  and  saw  his  countenance  flushed ;  and  this 
was  a  warning  for  him  to  suspend  his  attention.  Gray 
could  never  compose  voluntarily :  his  genius  resembled 
the  armed  apparition  in  Shakspeare's  master-tragedy. 
"  He  would  not  be  commanded."  When  he  wished  to 
compose  the  Installation  Ode,  for  a  considerable  time  he 
felt  himself  without  the  power  to  begin  it :  a  friend  call- 
ing on  him,  Gray  flung  open  his  door  hastily,  and  in  a 
hurried  voice  and  tone,  exclaiming  in  the  first  verse  of 
that  ode — 

Hence,  avaunt  I  'tis  holy  ground  I — 

his  friend  started  at  the  disordered  appearance  of  the 
bard,  whose  orgasm  had  disturbed  his  very  air  and  coun- 
tenance. 

Listen  to  one  labouring  with  all  the  magic  of  the  spell. 
Madame  Roland  has  thus  powerfully  described  the  ideal 
presence  in  her  first  readings  of  Telemachus  and  Tasso : — 
"My  respiration  rose,  I  felt  a  rapid  fire  colouring  my 
face,  and  my  voice  changing  had  betrayed  my  agitation. 
I  was  Eucharis  for  Telemachus,  and  Erminia  for  Tancred. 
However,  during  this  perfect  transformation,  I  did  not 
yet  think  that  I  myself  was  anything,  for  any  one :  the 


190  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

whole  had  no  connexion  with  myself.  I  sought  for  noth- 
ing ai'ound  me ;  I  was  they ;  I  saw  only  the  objects 
which  existed  for  them ;  it  Avas  a  dream,  without  being 
awakened." 

The  description  which  so  calm  and  exquisite  an  investi- 
gator of  taste  and  philosophy  as  our  sweet  and  polished 
Reynolds  has  given  of  himself  at  one  of  these  moments, 
is  too  rare  not  to  be  recorded  in  his  own  words.  Allud- 
ing to  the  famous  "  Transfiguration,"  our  own  Kaffaelle 
says — "  When  I  have  stood  looking  at  that  picture  from 
figure  to  figure,  the  eagerness,  the  spirit,  the  close  un- 
affected attention  of  each  figure  to  the  principal  action, 
my  thoughts  have  carried  me  away,  that  I  have  forgot 
myself;  and  for  that  time  might  be  looked  upon  as  an 
enthusiastic  madman  ;  for  I  could  really  fancy  the  whole 
action  was  passing  before  my  eyes." 

The  effect  which  the  study  of  Plutarch's  Illustrious 
Men  produced  on  the  mighty  mind  of  Alfieri,  during  a 
whole  winter,  while  he  lived  as  it  were  among  the  heroes 
of  antiquity,  he  has  himself  described.  Alfieri  wept  and 
raved  with  grief  and  indignation  that  he  was  born  under 
a  government  which  favoured  no  Roman  heroes  and 
sages.  As  often  as  he  was  struck  with  the  great  deeds 
of  these  great  men,  in  his  extreme  agitatiot.  he  rose  from 
his  seat  as  one  possessed.  The  feeling  of  genius  in 
Alfieri  was  suppressed  for  more  than  twenty  years,  by 
the  discouragement  of  his  uncle:  but  as  the  natural 
temperament  cannot  be  crushed  out  of  the  soul  of  genius, 
he  was  a  poet  without  writing  a  single  verse ;  and  as  a 
great  poet,  the  ideal  presence  at  times  became  ungovern- 
able, verging  to  madness.  In  traversing  the  wilds  of 
Arragon,  his  emotions  would  certainly  have  given  birth 
to  poetry,  could  he  have  expressed  himself  in  verse.  It 
was  a  complete  state  of  the  imaginative  existence,  or  this 
ideal  presence;  for  he  proceeded  along  the  wilds  of 
Arragon  in  a  reverie,  weeping  and  laughing  by  turns. 


EFFECTS   OF   GREAT   WORKS.  191 

He  considered  this  as  a  folly,  because  it  ended  in  nothing 
but  in  laughter  and  teai-s.  He  was  not  aAvare  that  he 
was  then  yielding  to  a  demonstration,  could  he  have 
judged  of  himself,  that  he  possessed  those  dispositions 
of  mind  and  that  energy  of  passion  which  form  the 
poetical  character. 

Genius  creates  by  a  single  conception;  the  statuary 
conceives  the  statue  at  once,  which  he  afterwards  exe- 
cutes by  the  slow  process  of  art ;  and  the  architect  con- 
trives a  whole  palace  in  an  instant.  In  a  single  principle, 
opening  as  it  were  on  a  sudden  to  genius,  a  great  and 
new  system  of  things  is  discovered.  It  has  happened, 
sometimes,  that  this  single  conception,  rushing  over  the 
whole  concentrated  spirit,  has  agitated  the  frame  convul- 
sively. It  comes  like  a  whisj^ered  secret  from  Nature. 
When  Malebranche  first  took  up  Descartes's  Treatise  on 
Man,  the  germ  of  his  own  subsequent  philosophic  system, 
such  was  his  intense  feeling,  that  a  violent  palpitation  of 
the  heart,  more  than  once,  obliged  him  to  lay  down  the 
volume.  When  the  first  idea  of  the  "  Essay  on  the  Arts 
and  Sciences"  rushed  on  the  mind  of  Rousseau,  a  feverish 
symptom  in  his  nervous  system  approached  to  a  slight 
delirium.  Stopping  under  an  oak,  he  wrote  mth  a  pencil 
the  Prosopopeia  of  Fabricius.  "I  still  remember  my 
solitary  transport  at  the  discovery  of  a  philosophical 
argument  against  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation," 
exclaimed  Gibbon  in  his  Memoirs. 

This  quick  sensibility  of  genius  has  suppressed  the 
voice  of  poets  in  reciting  their  most  pathetic  passages. 
Thomson  was  so  oppressed  by  a  passage  in  Virgil  or 
Milton  when  he  attempted  to  read,  that  "  his  voice  sunk 
in  ill-articulated  sounds  from  the  bottom  of  his  breast." 
The  tremulous  figures  of  the  ancient  Sibyl  appear  to 
have  been  viewed  in  the  land  of  the  Muses,  by  the  ener- 
getic description  which  Paulus  Jovius  gives  us  of  the 
impetus  and  afilatus  of  one  of  the  Italian  improvvisatori, 


192  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

some  of  whom,  I  have  heard  from  one  present  at  a 
similar  exhibition,  have  not  degenerated  in  poetic  inspi- 
ration, nor  in  its  corporeal  excitement.  "  His  eyes  fixed 
downwards,  kindle  as  he  gives  utterance  to  his  efi'usions, 
the  moist  drops  flow  down  his  cheeks,  the  veins  of  his 
forehead  swell,  and  wonderfully  his  learned  ear,  as  it 
were,  abstracted  and  intent,  moderates  each  impulse  of 
his  flowing  numbers."  * 

This  enthusiasm  throws  the  man  of  genius  amid  Nature 
into  absorbing  reveries  when  the  senses  of  other  men  are 
overcome  at  the  appearance  of  destruction ;  he  continues 
to  view  only  Nature  herself  The  mind  of  Pliny,  to  add 
one  more  chapter  to  his  mighty  scroll,  sought  Nature 
amidst  the  volcano  in  which  he  perished.  Vernet  was 
on  board  a  ship  in  a  raging  tempest  where  all  hope  was 
given  up.  The  astonished  captain  beheld  the  artist  of 
genius,  his  pencil  in  his  hand,  in  calm  enthusiasm  sketch- 
ing the  terrible  world  of  waters — studying  the  wave 
that  was  rising  to  devour  him.f 

There  is  a  tender  enthusiasm  in  the  elevated  studies 
of  antiquity.  Then  the  ideal  presence  or  the  imaginative 
existence  prevails,  by  its  perpetual  associations,  or  as  the 
late  Dr.  Brown  has,  perhaps,  more  distinctly  termed  them, 
suggestions.  "  In  contemplating  antiquity,  the  mind 
itself  becomes  antique,"  was  finely  observed  by  Livy, 
long  ere  our  philosophy  of  the  mind  existed  as  a  system. 
This  rapture,  or  sensation  of  deep  study,  has  been  de- 
scribed by  one  whose  imagination  had  strayed  into  the 
occult  learning  of  antiquity,  and  in  the  hymns  of  Or- 

*  The  passage  is  curious : — Oanenti  dcfixi  exardont  oculi,  sudores 
mauant,  froiitis  ven;c  contumescuiit,  ct  (juod  mirum  est,  erudittc  aures, 
tanquam  alien;c  et  intentie,  omnem  impetum  profluentium  numerorum 
exactissimd  ratione  moderantur." 

f  Vernet  was  the  artist  whose  sea-ports  of  France  still  decorate  the 
Louvre.  Tie  was  marine  painter  to  Louis  XV.  and  grandfather  of  the 
celebrated  Horace  Vernet,  whose  recent  death  has  deprived  France  of 
hor  best  painter  of  battle-scenes. — Ed. 


ENTHUSIASM.  103 

phcus  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  lifted  the  veil  from 
Nature.  His  feelings  -were  associated  with  her  loneli- 
ness. I  translate  his  words : — "  When  I  took  these  dark 
mystical  hymns  into  my  hands,  I  appeared  as  it  were  to 
he  descending  into  an  ahyss  of  the  mysteries  of  venera- 
ble antiquity ;  at  that  moment,  the  world  in  silence  and 
the  stars  and  moon  only,  watching  me."  This  enthusi- 
asm is  confirmed  by  Mr.  Mathias,  who  applies  this  de- 
scription to  his  own  emotions  on  his  first  opening  the 
manuscript  volumes  of  the  poet  Gray  on  the  philosophy 
of  Plato ;  "  and  many  a  learned  man,"  he  adds,  "  will 
acknowledge  as  his  own  the  feelings  of  this  animated 
scholar." 

Amidst  the  monuments  of  great  and  departed  nations, 
our  imagination  is  touched  by  the  grandeur  of  local 
impressions,  and  the  vivid  associations,  or  suggestions, 
of  the  manners,  the  arts,  and  the  individuals,  of  a  great 
people.  The  classical  author  of  Anacharsis,  when  in 
Italy,  would  often  stop  as  if  overcome  by  his  recollec- 
tions. Amid  camps,  temjjles,  circuses,  hippodromes,  and 
public  and  private  edifices,  he,  as  it  were,  held  an  interior 
converse  with  the  manes  of  those  who  seemed  hovering 
about  the  capital  of  the  old  world ;  as  if  he  had  been  a 
citizen  of  ancient  Rome  travelling  in  the  modern.  So 
men  of  genius  have  roved  amid  the  awful  ruins  till  the 
ideal  presence  has  fondly  built  up  the  city  anew,  and 
have  become  Romans  in  the  Rome  of  two  thousand 
years  past.  Pomponius  Loetus,  who  devoted  his  life  to 
this  study,  was  constantly  seen  wandering  amidst  the 
vestiges  of  this  "  throne  of  the  world,"  There,  in  many 
a  reverie,  as  his  eyes  rested  on  the  mutilated  arch 
and  the  broken  column,  abstracted  and  immovable,  he 
dropped  tears  in  the  ideal  presence  of  Rome  and  of  the 
Romans.*     Another  enthusiast  of  this  class  was  Bosius, 

*  Shelley  caught  mucti  of  his  poetry  in  wandering  among  the  rnina 
of  the  palace  of  the  Caesars  on  the  Palatine  Hill ;  and  tho  impression 
13 


194  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

who  songlit  beneatli  Rome  for  nnotlier  Rome,  in  those 
catacombs  built  by  the  early  Christians  for  their  asylum 
and  their  sepulchre.  His  -work  of  "Roma  Sotteranca" 
is  the  production  of  a  subterraneoiTS  life,  passed  in  fervent 
and  perilous  labours.  Taking  with  him  a  hermit's  meal 
for  tlie  week,  tliis  new  Pliny  often  descended  into  the 
bowels  of  the  earth,  by  lamp-light,  cleai"ing  away  the  sand 
and  ruins  till  a  tomb  broke  forth,  or  an  inscription  became 
legible.  Accompanied  by  some  friend  whom  his  enthu- 
siasm had  inspired  with  his  own  sympathy,  here  he  dic- 
tated his  notes,  tracing  the  mouldering  sculpture,  and 
catching  the  fading  ])icture.  Thrown  back  into  the  primi- 
tive ages  of  Christianity,  amid  the  local  impressions,  the 
historian  of  the  Christian  catacombs  collected  the  memo- 
rials of  an  age  and  of  a  race  which  were  hidden  beneath 
the  earth.* 

Tlie  same  enthusiasm  surrounds  the  vrorld  of  science 
with  that  creative  imagination  which  has  startled  even 
men  of  science  by  its  peculiar  discoveries.  Werner,  the 
mineralogist,  celebrated  for  his  lectures,  appears,  by  some 
accounts  transmitted  by  his  auditors,  to  have  exercised 
this  faculty.  Werner  often  said  that  "he  always  de- 
j)ended  on  the  muse  for  insi)iration."  His  unwritten  lec- 
ture was  a  reverie — till  kindling  in  his  progress,  blending 
science  and  imagination  in  the  grandeur  of  his  concep- 
tions, at  times,  as  if  he  had  gathered  about  him  the  very 
elements  of  nature,  liis  spirit  seemed  to  be  hovering  over 
the  waters  and  the  strata.  With  the  same  enthusiasm 
of  science,  Cuvier  meditated  on  some  bones,  and  some 

made  by  historic  ruins  on  tlio  mind  of  Byron  is  powerfully  evinced  in 
his  "  Chikle  Harold." — Ed. 

*  A  Lirgc  number  of  those  imp'ortnnt  memorials  have  been  since 
removed  to  the  Galkria  Lapidaria  of  the  Vatican,  and  arranged  on  tiio 
walls  by  Marini.  Tliey  are  invaluable  as  mementoes  of  the  early 
Churcli  at  Rome.  Aringhi  has  also  devoted  a  work  to  their  elucida- 
tion. The  Rev.  C.  Maitland's  "  Church  in  tho  Catacombs"  in  an  able 
general  summary,  clearly  displaying  their  intrinsic  historic  value. — Ed. 


WERNER   AND   CUVIER.  195 

frac:monts  of  "bone?,  which  coiihl  not  belong  to  any 
ki:own  class  of  the  animal  kingdoni.  The  philosopher 
dwelt  on  these  animal  ruins  till  he  constructed  numerous 
species  which  had  disappeared  from  the  globe.  This  sub- 
lime naturalist  has  ascertained  and  classified  the  fossil 
remains  of  animals  whose  existence  can  no  longer  be 
traced  in  the  records  of  mankind.  His  own  language 
bears  testimony  to  the  imagination  which  carried  him  on 
through  a  career  so  strange  and  wonderful.  "  It  is  a 
rational  object  of  ambition  in  the  mind  of  man,  to  v.'hom 
only  a  short  space  of  time  is  allotted  upon  earth,  to  have 
the  glory  of  restoring  the  history  of  thousands  of  ages 
toll  ich  preceded  the  existence  of  his  race,  and  of  thousands 
of  animals  that  never  were  contemporaneous  icith  his  sp>e- 
cics.^^  Philosophy  becomes  poetry,  and  science  imagina- 
tion, in  the  enthusiasm  of  genius.  Even  in  the  practical 
part  of  a  science,  painful  to  the  operator  himself,  Mr.  Aber- 
nethy  has  declared,  and  eloquently  declared,  that  this 
enthusiasm  is  absolutely  requisite.  "  We  have  need  of 
enthusiasm,  or  some  strong  incentive,  to  induce  ns  to 
spend  our  nights  in  study,  and  our  days  in  the  disgust- 
ing and  health-destroying  observation  of  human  diseases, 
which  alone  can  enable  us  to  imderstand,  alleviate,  or 
remove  them.  On  no  other  terms  can  we  be  considered 
as  real  students  of  our  profession — to  confer  that  which 
sick  kings  would  fondly  purchase  with  their  diadem — 
that  which  wealth  cannot  purchase,  nor  state  nor  rank 
bestow — to  alleviate  the  most  insupportable  of  human 
afflictions."  Such  is  the  enthusiasm  of  the  physiologist 
of  genius,  who  elevates  the  demonstrations  of  anatomical 
inquiries  by  the  cultivation  of  the  intellectual  faculties, 
connecting  "man  with  the  common  Master  of  the  uni- 
verse." 

This  enthusiasm  inconceivably  fills  the  mind  of  genius 
in  all  great  and  solemn  operations.  It  is  an  agitation 
amidst  calmness,  and  is  required  not  only  ia  the  fine  arts, 


103  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

but  -wherercr  a,  great  and  continued  exertion  of  the  soul 
must  be  employed.  The  great  ancients,  who,  if  they  Avere* 
not  always"  philosophers,  were  always  men  of  genius,  saw, 
or  imagined  they  saw,  a  divinity  within  the  man.  This 
enthusiasm  is  alike  experienced  in  the  silence  of  study 
and  amidst  the  roar  of  cannon,  in  painting  a  pictui'e  or  in 
scaling  a  rampart.  View  De  Thou,  the  historian,  after 
his  morning  prayers,  imploring  the  Divinity  to  purify  his 
heart  from  partiality  and  hatred,  and  to  open  his  spirit  in 
developing  the  truth,  amidst  the  contending  factions  of 
his  times  ;  and  Haydn,  employed  in  his  "  Creation,"  earn- 
estly addressing  the  Creator  ere  he  struck  his  instrument. 
In  moments  like  these,  man  becomes  a  perfect  unity — one 
thought  and  one  act,  abstracted  from  all  other  thoughts 
and  all  other  acts.  This  intensity  of  the  mind  was  felt 
by  Gray  in  his  loftiest  excursions,  and  is  perhaps  the 
same  jDOwer  which  impels  the  villager,  when,  to  overcome 
his  rivals  in  a  contest  for  leaping,  he  retires  back  some 
steps,  collects  all  exertion  into  his  mind,  and  clears  the 
eventful  bound.  One  of  our  admirals  in  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth  held  as  a  maxim,  that  a  height  of  passion^ 
amounting  to  frenzy,  was  necessary  to  qualify  a  man  for 
the  command  of  a  fleet;  and  Nelson,  decorated  by  all  his 
honours  about  him,  on  the  day  of  battle,  at  the  sight  of 
those  emblems  of  glory  emulated  himself  This  enthu- 
siasm was  necessary  for  liis  genius,  and  made  it  eifective. 
But  this  enthusiasm,  prolonged  as  it  often  has  been  by 
the  operation  of  the  imaginative  existence,  becomes  a 
state  of  perturbed  feeling,  and  can  only  be  distinguished 
from  a  disordered  intellect  by  the  power  of  volition  pos- 
sessed by  a  sound  mind  of  withdraAving  from  the  ideal 
world  into  the  world  of  sense.  It  is  but  a  step  which 
may  carry  us  from  the  wanderings  of  fancy  into  the  aber- 
rations of  delirium.  The  endurance  of  attention,  even  in 
mimls  of  the  higliest  order,  is  limited  by  a  law  of  nature; 
and  when  thinking  is  goaded  on  to  exhaustion,  confusion 


POWER   OF  TEOLGET.  197 

of  ideas  ensues,  as  straining  any  one  of  our  limbs  by 
excessive  exertion  produces  tremor  and  torpof. 

T\'ith  curious  art  the  brain  too  finely  wrought, 
Preys  on  herself  and  is  destroyed  by  Thought; 
Constant  attention  wears  the  active  mind. 
Blots  out  her  powers,  and  leaves  a  blank  behind — 
The  greatest  genius  to  this  fate  may  bow. 

Even  minds  less  susceptible  tlian  liigh  genius  may  be- 
come overpowered  by  their  imagination.  Often,  in  the 
deep  silence  around  us,  we  seek  to  relieve  ourselves  by 
some  voluntary  noise  or  action  Avhich  may  direct  our  at- 
tention to  an  exterior  object,  and  bring  us  back  to  the 
world,  which  we  had,  as  it  were,  left  behind  ns.  The  cir- 
cumstance is  sufficiently  familiar;  as  well  as  another; 
that  whenever  we  ave  absorbed  in  profound  contempla- 
tion, a  startling  noise  scatters  the  spirits,  and  painfully 
agitates  the  whole  frame.  The  nerves  are  then  in  a  state 
of  the  utmost  relaxation.  There  may  be  an  agony  in 
thought  which  only  deep  thinkers  experience.  The  ter- 
rible~  effect  of  metaphysical  studies  on  Beattie  has  been 
told  by  himself.  "  Since  the  '  Essay  on  Truth '  was  print- 
ed in  quarto,  I  have  never  dared  to  read  it  over.  I 
durst  not  even  read  the  sheets  to  see  whether  there  were 
any  errors  in  the  print,  and  was  obliged  to  get  a  friend 
to  do  that  office  for  me.  These  studies  came  in  time  to 
have  dreadful  effects  upon  my  nervous  system ;  and  I 
cannot  read  what  I  then  ^a-ote  without  some  degree  of 
horror,  because  it  recalls  to  my  mind  the  horrors  that  I 
have  sometimes  felt  after  passing  a  long  evening  in  those 
severe  studies." 

Goldoni,  after  a  rash  exertion  of  writing  sixteen  plays 
in  a  year,  confesses  he  paid  the  penalty  of  the  folly.  He 
flew  to  Genoa,  leading  a  life  of  delicious  vacuity.  To 
pass  the  day  without  doing  anything,  was  all  the  enjoy- 
ment he  was  now  capable  of  feeling.  But  long  after  he 
said,  *'  I  felt  at  that  time,  and  have  ever  since  continued 


19S  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

to  feel,  the  consequences  of  that  exhaustion  of  spirits  I 
sustained  in  composing  my  sixteen  comedies." 

The  enthusiasm  of  study  was  experienced  by  Pope  in 
his  self-cducatiun,  and  once  it  clouded  over  his  fine 
intellect.  It  was  the  severity  of  his  application  Avhich 
distorted  his  body ;  and  he  then  partook  of  a  calamity 
incidental  to  the  fomily  of  g'cnius,  for  he  sunk  into  that 
state  of  exhaustion  which  Smollett  experienced  during 
half  a  year,  called  a  coma  vigil^  an  affection  of  the  brain, 
where  the  principle  of  life  is  so  reduced,  that  all  ex- 
ternal objects  appear  to  be  passing  in  a  dream.  Boer- 
liaave  has  related  of  himself,  that  having  imprudently 
indulged  in  intense  thought  on  a  particular  subject,  he 
did  not  close  his  eyes  for  six  weeks  after;  and  Tissot,  in 
his  work  on  the  health  of  men  of  letters,  abounds  in 
similar  cases,  where  a  complete  stupor  has  affected  the 
imliappy  student  for  a  period  of  six  months. 

Assuredly  the  finest  geniuses  have  not  always  the 
power  to  Avithdraw  themselves  from  that  intensely  inter- 
esting train  of  ideas,  which  we  have  shown  has  not  been 
removed  from  about  them  by  even  the  violent  stimuli  of 
exterior  objects;  and  the  scenical  illusion  which  then 
occurs,  has  been  called  the  hallucinatio  studiosa,  or  false 
ideas  in  reverie.  Such  was  the  state  in  which  Petrarch 
found  himself,  in  that  minute  narrative  of  a  vision  in 
which  Laura  appeared  to  him ;  and  Tasso,  in  the  lofty 
conversations  he  held  with  a  spirit  that  glided  towards 
him  on  the  beams  of  the  sun.  In  this  state  was  Male- 
branche  listening  to  the  voice  of  God  Avithin  him ;  and 
Lord  Herbert,  when,  to  know  whether  he  should  publish 
his  book,  he  threw  himself  on  his  knees,  and  interrogated 
the  Deity  in  the  stillness  of  the  sky.*     And  thus  Pascal 

*  In  liig  curious  nntobio;^raphy  ho  ha=!  givon  tho  prayer  he  iise'l,  end- 
iug,  "I  am  not  satisfied  whether  I  shall  publish  this  book  de  veritate; 
if  it  be  for  thy  glory,  I  b&seccli  theo  p,ivo  me  some  sign  from  heaven; 
ii'  not  1  shall  suppress  it."   His  lordship  adds,  "  I  Iiud  no  sooner  spoken 


VISIONARIES   OF   GENIUS.  199 

started  at  times  at  a  fiery  gulf  opening  by  liis  side.  Spi- 
nello  having  painted  the  fall  of  the  rebellious  angels,  had 
so  strongly  imagined  the  illusion,  and  more  particularly 
the  terrible  features  of  Lucifer,  that  he  was  himself  struck 
with  such  horror  as  to  have  been  long  afflicted  witli  the 
presence  of  the  demon  to  which  his  genius  had  given 
birth.  The  influence  of  the  same  ideal  presence  operated 
on  the  religious  painter  Angeloni,  who  could  never  rep- 
resent the  sufferings  of  Jesus  without  his  eyes  overflowing 
with  tears.  Descartes,  when  young,  and  in  a  country 
seclusion,  his  brain  exliausted  with  meditation,  and  his 
imagination  heated  to  excess,  heard  a  voice  in  the  air 
which  called  him  to  pursue  the  search  of  truth ;  nor  did 
he  doubt  the  vision,  and  this  delirious  dreaming  of  genius 
charmed  him  even  in  his  after-studies.  Our  Collins  and 
Cowper  Avere  often  thrown  into  that  extraordinary  state 
of  mind,  when  the  ideal  presence  converts  us  into  vision- 
aries ;  and  their  illusions  were  as  strong  as  Swedenborg's, 
who  saw  a  terrestrial  heaven  in  the  glittering  streets  of 
his  New  Jerusalem;  or  Jacob  Behmen's,  Avho  listened  to 
a  celestial  voice  till  he  beheld  the  apparition  of  an  angel ; 
or  Cardan's,  when  he  so  carefully  observed  a  number  of 
little  armed  men  at  his  feet ;  or  Benvenuto  Cellini's, 
whose  vivid  imagination  and  glorious  egotism  so  fre- 
quently contemplated  "  a  resplendent  light  hovering  over 
his  shadow." 

Such  minds  identified  themselves  with  their  visions ! 
If  we  pass  them  over  by  asserting  that  they  were  insane, 
we  are  only  cutting  the  knot  which  we  cannot  untie.     We 

these  words  but  a  loud,  though  gentle  noise  came  from  the  heavens 
(for  it  was  like  nothing  on  earth)  whieii  did  so  comfort  and  cheer  me, 
that  I  took  my  petition  as  granted,  and  that  I  had  the  sign  I  demanded 
whereupon  also  I  resolved  to  print  my  book.  This  (how  strange  soever 
it  may  seem)  I  protest  before  the  eternal  God  is  true,  neitlier  am  I  any 
way  superstitiously  deceived  therein,  since  I  did  not  only  clearly  hear 
the  noise,  but  in  the  serenest  sky  that  ever  I  saw,  being  without  till 
cloud,  did  to  my  thinking  see  the  place  from  whence  it  came." — Ed. 


200  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

have  no  right  to  deny  what  some  maintain,  that  a  sym- 
pathy of  the  corporeal  with  the  incorporeal  nature  of  man, 
his  imaginative  with  his  physical  existence,  is  an  excite- 
ment which  appears  to  have  been  exj^erienced  by  persons 
of  a  peculiar  organization,  and  which  metaphysicians  in 
despair  must  resign  to  the  speculations  of  enthusiasts 
themselves,  though  metaphysicians  reason  about  phe- 
nomena far  removed  from  the  perceptions  of  the  eye. 
The  historian  of  the  mind  cannot  omit  this  fact,  unques- 
tionable, however  incomprehensible.  According  to  our 
own  conceptions,  this  state  must  produce  a  strange  myste- 
rious personage  :  a  concentration  of  a  Inxman  being  within 
himself,  endowed  with  inward  eyes,  ears  which  listen  to  in- 
terior sounds,  and  invisible  hands  touching  impalpable  ob- 
jects, for  whatever  they  act  or  however  they  are  acted  on, 
as  far  as  respects  themselves  all  must  have  passed  within 
their  own  minds.  The  Platonic  Dr.  More  flattered  him- 
self that  he  was  an  enthusiast  without  enthusiasm,  which 
seems  but  a  suspicious  state  of  convalescence.  "  I  must 
ingenuously  confess,"  he  says,  "  that  I  have  a  natural  touch 
of  enthusiasm  in  my  complexion,  but  such  as  I  thank  God 
was  ever  governable  enough,  and  have  found  at  length 
perfectly  subduable.  In  virtue  of  which  victory  I  know 
better  what  is  in  enthusiasts  tlian  they  themselves  ;  and 
therefore  was  able  to  write  with  life  and  judgment,  and 
shall,  I  hope,  contribute  not  a  little  to  the  peace  and  quiet 
of  this  kingdom  thereby."  Thus  far  one  of  its  votaries : 
and  all  that  he  vaunts  to  have  acquired  by  this  mysterious 
faculty  of  enthusiasm  is  tlie  having  rendered  it  "  at  length 
perfectly  subduable,"  Yet  those  who  have  written  on 
"Mystical  devotion,"  liave  declared  that,  "it  is  a  sublime 
state  of  mind  to  which  whole  sects  have  aspired,  and  some 
individuals  appear  to  have  attained."*     Tlie  histories  of 

*  Cliarles  Butler  lias  drawn  up  a  sensiblo  essay  on  "Mystical  Devo- 
tion." He  was  a  Roman  Catholic.  Norris,  and  Dr.  Henry  More,  and 
Bishop  Berkeley,  may  bo  cousuUud  by  the  curious. 


ENTHUSIASM.  2Ul 

great  visionanos,  were  they  correctly  detailed,  would 
probably  prove  how  tlieir  delusions  consisted  of  the  ocu 
lar  spectra  of  their  brain  and  the  accelerated  sensations  of 
their  nerves.  Bayle  has  conjured  up  an  amusing  thcoi-y 
of  apparitions,  to  show  that  Ilobbes,  who  was  subject  to 
occasional  terrors,  might  fear  that  a  certain  combination 
of  atoms  agitating  his  brain  might  so  disordei*  his  mind 
as  to  expose  him  to  spectral  visions ;  and  so  being  very 
timid,  and  distrusting  his  own  imagination,  he  was  averse 
at  times  to  be  left  alone.  Apparitions  often  happen  in 
dreams,  but  they  may  happen  to  a  man  when  awake,  for 
reading  and  hearing  of  them  would  revive  their  images, 
and  these  images  might  play  even  an  incredulous  phi- 
losopher some  xmlucky  trick. 

But  men  of  genius  whose  enthusiasm  has  not  been  past 
recovery,  have  experienced  this  extraordinary  state  of 
the  mind,  in  those  exhaustions  of  study  to  which  they 
imquestionably  are  subject.  Tissot,  on  "The  Health  of 
Men  of  Letters,"  has  produced  a  terrifying  number  of 
cases.  They  see  and  hear  what  none  but  themselves  do. 
Genius  thrown  into  this  peculiar  state  has  produced  some 
noble  effusions.  Kotzebue  was  once  absorbed  in  hypo- 
chondriacal melancholy,  and  appears  to  have  meditated 
on  self-destruction;  but  it  happened  that  he  preserved 
liis  habit  of  dramatic  composition,  and  produced  one  of 
his  most  energetic  dramas — that  of  "  Misanthropy  and 
Repentance."  He  tells  us  that  he  had  never  experienced 
such  a  rapid  flow  of  thoughts  and  images,  and  he  believed, 
what  a  physiological  history  would  perhaps  show,  that 
there  are  some  maladies,  those  of  the  brain  and  the 
nerves,  which  actually  stretch  the  powers  of  the  mind 
beyond  their  usual  reach.  It  is  the  more  vivid  world 
of  ideal  existence. 

But  what  is  more  evident,  men  of  the  finest  genius  have 
experienced  these  hallucinations  in  society  acting  on  tJieir 
moral  habits.     They  have   insulated  the  mind.     \Yith 


202  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

tliera  ideas  have  become  realities,  and  suspicions  certain- 
ties ;  while  events  have  been  noted  down  as  seen  and 
heard,  which  in  truth  had  never  occurred.  Kousseau's 
phantoms  scarcely  ever  quitted  him  for  a  day.  Barry 
imagined  that  he  was  invisibly  persecuted  by  the  Royal 
Academy,  who  had  even  spirited  iip  a  gang  of  house- 
breakers. The  vivid  memoirs  of  Alfieri  will  authenticate 
what  Donne,  who  himself  had  suffered  from  them,  calls 
"these  eclipses,  sudden  offuscations  and  darkening  of  the 
senses."  Too  often  the  man  of  genius,  with  a  vast  and. 
solitary  power,  darkens  the  scene  of  life ;  he  builds  a 
pyramid  between  himself  and  the  sun.  Mocking  at  the 
expedients  by  which  society  has  contrived  to  protect  its 
feebleness,  he  would  break  down  the  institution  from 
which  he  has  shrunk  away  in  the  loneliness  of  his  feelings. 
Such  is  the  insulating  intellect  in  which  some  of  the  most 
elevated  spirits  have  been  reduced.  To  imbue  ourselves 
with  the  genius  of  their  works,  even  to  think  of  them,  is 
an  awful  thing  !  Li  nature  their  existence  is  a  solecism, 
as  their  genius  is  a  j^aradox  ;  for  their  crimes  seem  to  be 
without  guilt,  their  curses  have  kindness  in  them,  and  if 
they  afflict  mankind  it  is  in  sorrow. 

Yet  what  less  than  enthusiasm  is  the  purchase-price  of 
high  passion  and  invention  ?  Perhaps  never  has  thero 
been  a  man  of  genius  of  this  rare  cast,  who  has  not  be- 
trayed the  ebullitions  of  imagination  in  some  outward 
action,  at  that  period  when  the  illusions  of  life  are  more 
real  to  genius  than  its  realities.  There  is  a  fata  onor- 
(jana^  that  throws  into  the  air  a  pictured  land,  and  the 
deceived  eye  ti'usts  till  the  visionary  shadows  glide  away. 
"I  have  dreamt  of  a  golden  land,"  exclaimed  Fuseli, 
"  and  solicit  in  vain  for  the  barge  which  is  to  carry  me  to 
its  shore."  A  slight  derangement  of  our  accustomed 
habits,  a  little  perturbation  of  the  faculties,  and  a  roman- 
tic tinge  on  the  feelings,  give  no  indiiferent  promise  of 
genius  J  oi'tliat  generous  temper  which  knowing  nothing 


ENTKUSLVSM.  203 

of  tiie  baseness  of  muTikincl,  with  inclcfinitc  views  carries 
on  some  glorious  design  to  charm  the  AVorlcT  or  to  make 
it  lia])pier.  Often  we  hear,  from  the  confessions  of  men 
of  genius,  of  their  having  in  youth  indulged  the  most 
elevating  and  the  most  chimerical  projects ;  and  if  age 
ridicule  thy  imaginative  existence,  be  assured  that  it  is 
the  decline  of  its  genius.  That  virtuous  and  tender  en- 
thusiast, Fenelon,  in  his  early  youth,  troubled  his  friends 
with  a  classical  and  religious  reverie,  lie  was  on  the 
point  of  quitting  them  to  restore  the  independence  of 
Greece,  with  the  piety  of  a  missionary,  and  with  the  taste 
of  a  classical  antiquary.  The  Peloponnesus  opened  to 
him  the  Church  of  Corinth,  where  St.  Paul  preached,  the 
PiriTBus  where  Socrates  conversed ;  while  the  latent  poet 
was  to  pluck  laurels  from  Delphi,  and  rove  amidst  the 
amenities  of  Tempe.  Such  was  the  influence  of  the  ideal 
ptresence ;  and  barren  will  be  his  imagination,  and  luck- 
less his  fortune,  who,  claiming  the  honours  of  genius,  has 
never  been  touched  by  such  a  temporary  delirium. 

To  this  enthusiasm,  and  to  this  alone,  can  we  attribute 
the  self-immolation  of  men  of  genius.  Mighty  and  labo- 
rious works  have  been  pursued  as  a  forlorn  hope,  at  the 
certain  destruction  of  the  fortune  of  the  individual.  Vast 
labours  attest  the  enthusiasm  which  accompanied  their 
pi'ogress.  Such  men  have  sealed  their  works  with  their 
blood:  they  have  silently  borne  the  pangs  of  disease; 
they  have  barred  themselves  from  the  pursuits  of  fortune; 
they  have  torn  themselves  away  from  all  they  loved  in 
life,  patiently  snifering  these  self-denials,  to  escape  from 
interruptions  and  impediments  to  their  studies.  Martyrs 
of  literature  and  art,  they  behold  in  their  solitude  the 
halo  of  immortality  over  their  studious  heads — that  fame 
which  is  "a  life  beyond  life."  Van  Helraont,  in  his 
library  and  in  his  laboratory,  preferred  their  busy  soli- 
tude to  the  honours  and  the  invitations  of  Eodolphus  II., 
there  writing  down  what  he  daily  experienced   during 


204:  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

thirty  years ;  nor  would  the  enthusiast  yield  u^t  to  tlio 
emperor  one  of  those  golden  and  visionary  days !  Milton 
would  not  desist  from  2)roceeding  with  one  of  his  works, 
althoiigh  warned  by  the  physician  of  the  certain  loss  of 
his  sight.  He  declared  he  preferred  his  duty  to  his  eyes, 
and  doubtless  his  fame  to  his  comfort.  Anthony  "Wood, 
to  preserve  the  lives  of  others,  voluntarily  resigned  his 
own  to  cloistered  studies  ;  nor  did  the  literary  passion 
desert  him  in  his  last  moments,  when  with  his  dying 
hands  the  hermit  of  literature  still  grasped  his  beloved 
j)apers,  and  his  last  mortal  thoughts  dwelt  on  his  "  Athene 
Oxonieuses."  Moreri,  the  founder  of  our  great  biogra- 
phical collections  conceived  the  design  with  such  enthu- 
siasm, and  found  such  seduction  in  the  laboux",  that  he 
willingly  witlidrew  from  the  popular  celebrity  he  had 
acquired  as  a  preacher,  and  the  preferment  which  a  min 
ister  of  state,  in  whose  house  he  resided,  Avould  have 
opened  to  his  views.*  After  the  first  edition  of  his 
"Historical  Dictionary,"  he  had  nothing  so  much  at 
heart  as  its  improvement.  His  unyielding  application 
was  converting  labour  into  death ;  but  collecting  his  last 
renovated  vigour,  with  his  dying  hands  he  gave  the  vol- 
ume to  the  world,  though  he  did  not  live  to  witness  even 
its  publication.  All  objects  in  life  appeared  mean  to  him, 
compared  with  that  exalted  delight  of  addressing,  to  the 
literary  men  of  his  ago,  the  history  of  their  brothers. 
Such  ai-e  the  men,  as  Bacon  says  of  himself,  who  are 
"  the  servants  of  posterity," 

Who  scorn  delights,  aud  live  laborious  days  I 

Tlic  same  enthusiasm  inspires  the  pupils  of  art  con- 
sumed by  their  own  ardour.     Tlie  young  and  classical 

*  Louis  Moreri  was  boru  in  Provence  in  1013,  and  died  in  IGSO,  at 
the  early  age  of  .'}7,  wiiile  engaged  on  a  second  edition  of  his  great 
worlc.  Tiie  miiiislcr  alluded  to  in  the  text  was  M.  de  Ponipouno,  Sec- 
retary of  State  to  Louis  XIV.  until  the  year  1670. — Ed. 


EXTRUSIASir.  205 

scnlptor  wTio  raised  the  statue  of  Charles  IT.,  placed  in 
the  centre  of  the  Royal  Exchange,  was,  in  the  midst  of 
his  work,  advised  by  his  medical  friends  to  desist ;  for 
the  energy  of  his  labour,  with  the  strong  excitement  of 
his  feelings,  already  had  made  fatal  inroads  in  his  consti- 
tution :  but  he  was  willing,  he  said,  to  die  at  the  foot  of 
his  statue.  The  statue  was  raised,  and  the  young  sculp- 
tor, with  the  shining  eye  and  hectic  flush  of  consumption, 
bclield  it  there — returned  home — and  died.  Drouais,  a 
pupil  of  David,  the  French  painter,  was  a  youth  of  fortune, 
but  the  solitary  pleasure  of  his  youth  was  his  devotion  to 
Raphael ;  he  was  at  his  studies  from  four  in  the  morning 
till  night.  "  Painting  or  nothing  !"  was  the  cry  of  tliis 
enthusiast  of  elegance ;  "  First  fame,  then  amusement," 
was  another.  His  sensibility  was  great  as  his  enthusiasm ; 
and  he  cut  in  pieces  the  i:)icture  for  which  David  declared 
he  would  inevitably  obtain  the  prize.  "  I  have  had  my 
reward  in  your  "approbation ;  but  next  year  I  shall  feel 
more  certain  of  deserving  it,"  was  the  reply  of  this  young 
enthusiast.  Afterwards  he  astonished  Paris  with  his 
"Mariiis;"  but  while  engaged  on  a  subject  which  he 
could  never  quit,  the  principle  of  life  itself  was  drying  up 
in  his  veins.  Henry  Headley  and  Kirke  White  were  the 
early  victims  of  the  enthusiasm  of  study,  and  are  mourned 
by  the  few  who  are  organized  like  themselves. 

'Twas  thine  own  genius  gave  the  final  blow, 
And  help'd  to  plant  the  wound  that  laid  thee  low ; 
So  the  struck  eagle,  stretch'd  upon  the  plain, 
No  more  through  rolling  clouds  to  soar  again, 
View'd  his  own  feather  on  the  fatal  dart, 
And  wing'd  the  shaft  that  quiver'd  in  his  heart ; 
Keen  were  his  pangs,  but  keener  far  to  feel 
He  nursed  the  pinion  which  impell'd  the  steel, 
"While  the  same  plumage  that  had  warm'd  his  nest. 
Drank  the  last  Ufe-drop  of  his  bleeding  breast. 

One  of  our  former  great  students,  "when  reduced  in  health 


206  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

by  excessive  study,  was  entreated  to  abandon  it,  and  in 
the  scliolastic  language  of  the  day,  not  to  perdere  siib- 
stantiam  propter  accidentia.  AVith  a  smile  the  martyr 
of  study  repeated  a  verso  from  Juvenal : 

Nee  propter  vitara  vivendi  pcrdere  causas. 
jSTol  not  for  life  loso  that  for  which  I  livel 

Thus  the  shadow  of  dcatli  falls  among  those  who  are 
existing  Avith  more  than  life  about  them.  Yet  "  there  is 
no  celebrity  for  the  artist,"  said  Gesner,  "  if  the  love  of 
his  own  art  do  not  become  a  veliement  passion ;  if  the 
hours  he  employs  to  cultivate  it  be  not  for  him  the  most 
delicious  ones  of  his  life ;  if  study  become  not  his  true  ex- 
istence and  his  first  happiness ;  if  the  society  of  his 
brothers  in  art  be  not  that  which  most  pleases  him ;  if 
even  in  the  night-time  the  ideas  of  his  art  do  not  occupy 
his  vigils  or  his  dreams ;  if  in  the  morning  he  fly  not  to 
his  work,  impatient  to  recommence  what  he  left  unfinished. 
These  are  the  marks  of  liim  who  laboiirs  for  true  glory 
and  posterity  ;  but  if  he  seek  only  to  please  the  taste  of 
his  age,  his  works  will  not  kindle  the  desires  nor  touch 
the  hearts  of  tliose  who  love  the  arts  and  the  artists." 

Unaccompanied  by  enthusiasm,  genius  Avill  produce 
nothing  but  uninteresting  works  of  art ;  not  a  Avork  of  art 
resembling  tlie  dove  of  Archytas,  which  beautiful  piece 
of  mechanism,  while  other  artists  beheld  flying,  no  one 
could  frame  such  another  dove  to  meet  it  in  the  air. 
Enthusiasm  is  that  secret  and  harmonious  spirit  Avhich 
hovers  over  tlic  production  of  genius,  throwing  tlie  reader 
of  a  book,  or  tlie  spectator  of  a  statue,  into  the  very  ideal 
presence  Avhence  these  works  have  really  originated.  A 
great  Avork  always  leaves  us  in  a  state  of  musing. 


JEALOUSY  OF  GENIUS.  207 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

Of  the  jealousy  of  Genius. — Jealousy  often  proportioned  to  the  degree 
of  genius. — A  perpetual  feveramong  Authors  and  Artists. — Instances 
of  its  incredible  excess  among  brothers  and  benefactors. — Of  a  pe- 
culiar species,  where  the  fever  consumes  the  sufferer,  without  its 
malignancy. 

JEALOUSY,  long  supposed  to  be  the  offsi^rlng  of  little 
minds,  is  not,  however,  confined  to  them.  In  the 
literary  republic,  the  passion  fiercely  rages  among  the 
senators  as  well  as  among  the  j)eople.  In  that  curious 
self-description  which  Linnajus  comprised  in  a  single 
page,  written  with  the  precision  of  a  naturalist,  that 
great  man  discovered  that  his  constitution  was  liable  to 
be  afflicted  vrith  jealousy.  Literary  jealousy  seems  often 
projiortioned  to  the  degree  of  genius,  and  the  sliadowy 
and  equivocal  claims  of  literary  honour  is  the  real  cause 
of  this  terrible  fear;  for  in  cases  where  the  object  is  more 
palpable  and  definite  than  intellectual  excellence,  jeal- 
ousy docs  not  appear  so  strongly  to  aifect  the  claimant 
tor  admiration.  The  most  beautiful  woman,  in  the  sea- 
son of  beauty,  is  more  haughty  than  jealous ;  she  rarely 
encounters  a  rival ;  and  while  her  claims  exist,  who  can 
contend  with  a  fine  feature  or  a  dissolving  glance? 
But  a  man  of  genius  has  no  other  existence  than  in 
the  opinion  of  the  world ;  a  divided  empire  would 
obscure  him,  and  a  contested  one  might  prove  his 
annihilation. 

The  lives  of  authors  and  artists  exhibit  a  most  painful 
disease  in  that  jealousy  which  is  the  perpetual  fever  of 
their  existence.  Why  does  Plato  never  mention  Xeno- 
phon,  and  Avhy  does  Xenophon  inveigh  against  Plato, 
studiously  collecting  eveiy  little  rumour  which  may  de- 
tract from  his  fame  ?    They  wrote  on  the  same  subject ! 


308  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Tlie  studied  affectation  of  Aristotle  to  differ  from  tli3 
doctrines  of  his  master  Plato  wliile  he  was  following 
^them,  led  him  into  ambiguities  and  contradictions  which 
have  been  remarked.  The  two  fathers  of  our  poetry, 
Chaucer  and  Gower,  suffered  their  friendship  to  be  inter- 
rupted tovv'^ards  the  close  of  their  lives.  Chaucer  bitterly 
reflects  on  his  friend  for  the  indelicacy  of  some  of  his 
tales  :  "  Of  all  such  cursed  stories  I  say  fy  !"  and  Gower, 
evidently  in  return,  erased  those  verses  in  j^raise  of  his 
friend  which  he  had  inserted  in  the  first  copy  of  his 
"  Confessio  Amantis."  Why  did  Corneille,  tottering  to 
the  grave,  when  Racine  consulted  him  on  his  first  tragedy, 
advise  the  author  never  to  write  another?  Why  does 
Voltaire  continually  detract  from  the  sublimity  of  Cor- 
neille, the  sweetness  of  Racine,  and  the  fire  of  Crebillon  ? 
Why  did  Dryden  never  spsak  of  Otway  with  kindness 
but  when  in  liis  grave,  then  acknowledging  that  Otway 
excelled  him  in  the  pathetic  ?  Why  did  Leibnitz  speak 
slightingly  of  Locke's  Essay,  and  meditate  on  nothing 
less  than  the  complete  overthrow  of  Newton's  system  ? 
Why,  when  Boccaccio  sent  to  Petrarch  a  copy  of  Dante, 
declaring  that  the  work  was  like  a  first  light  which  had 
illuminated  his  mind,  did  Petrarch  boldly  observe  that 
he  had  not  been  anxious  to  inqnirc  after  it,  for  intending 
himself  to  compose  it  in  the  vernacular  idiom,  he  had  no 
wish  to  be  considered  as  a  plagiary  ?  and  ho  only  allows 
Dante's  superiority  from  having  written  in  the  vulgar 
idiom,  which  he  did  not  consid(>r  an  enviable  merit.  Tluis 
frigidly  Petrarch  could  behold  the  solitary  ^tna  bcfo'"> 
him,  in  the  "  Inferno,"  while  ho  shrunk  into  himself  with 
the  painful  consciousness  of  the  existence  of  another  poet, 
ol)scuriiig  his  own  majesty.  It  is  curious  to  observe 
Loi-d  SliafLcsbury  treating  with  tho  most  acrimoiiious 
conteini)t  tho  great  writ(M-s  of  his  own  times — Cowley, 
Dryden,  vVddison,  and  Prior.  We  cannot  imagine  that 
his  lordship  was  so  entirely  destitute  of  every  fueling  of 


JEALOUSY  OF  AUTHORS.  209 

wdt  and  genius,  as  would  appear  by  this  damnatory  criti- 
cism on  all  the  wit  and  genius  of  his  age.  It  is  not,  in- 
deed, difficult  to  comprehend  a  different  motive  for  this 
extravagant  censure  in  the  jealousy  which  even  a  gi-eat 
writer  often  experiences  when  he  comes  in  contact  with 
his  living  rivals,  and  hardily,  if  not  impudently,  practises 
those  arts  of  critical  detraction  to  raise  a  moment's  delu- 
sion, which  can  gratify  no  one  but  himself. 

The  moral  sense  has  often  been  found  too  weak  to 
temper  the  malignancy  of  literary  jealousy,  and  has  im- 
pelled some  men  of  genius  to  an  incredible  excess.  A 
aiemorable  example  offers  in  the  history  of  the  two  bro- 
thers. Dr.  William  and  John  Hunter,  both  great  charac- 
ters fitted  to  be  rivals ;  but  Nature,  it  was  imagined,  in 
the  tenderness  of  blood,  had  placed  a  bar  to  rivalry. 
John,  without  any  determined  pursuit  in  his  youth,  was 
received  by  his  brother  at  the  height  of  his  celebrity ;  the 
doctor  initiated  him  into  his  school;  they  performed 
their  experiments  together ;  and  William  Hunter  was  the 
first  to  announce  to  the  world  the  great  genius  of  his 
bi'other.  After  this  close  connexion  in  all  their  studies" 
and  discoveries,  Dr.  William  Hunter  published  his  mag- 
nificent work — the  proud  favourite  of  his  heart,  the  as- 
eertor  of  his  fame.  Was  it  credible  that  the  genius  of 
the  celebrated  anatomist,  which  had  been  nursed  under 
the  wing  of  his  brother,  should  turn  on  that  wing  to  clip 
\t  ?  John  Hunter  put  in  his  claim  to  the  chief  discovery ; 
It  was  answered  by  his  brother.  The  Royal  Society, 
to  whom  they  appealed,  concealed  the  documents  of  this 
unnatural  feud.  The  blow  was  felt,  and  the  jealousy  of 
literary  honour  for  ever  separated  the  brothers — the 
brothers  of  genius. 

Such,  too,  was  the  jealousy  which  separated  Agostino 

and  Annibal  Carracci,  whom  their  cousin  Ludovico  for 

so  many  years  had  attempted  to  unite,  and  who,  during 

the  time  their  academy  existed,  worked  together,  com- 
14 


210  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

billing  their  separate  powers.*  The  learniJig  and  the 
philosophy  of  Agostino  assisted  the  invention  of  the 
master  genius,  Annibal ;  but  Annibal  was  jealous  of  the 
more  literary  and  poetical  character  of  Agostino,  and,  by 
his  sarcastic  humour,  frequently  mortified  his  learned 
brother.  Alike  great  artists,  when  once  employed  on  the 
same  work,  Agostino  was  thought  to  have  excelled  his 
brother.  Annibal,  sullen  and  scornful,  immediately 
broke  with  him,  and  their  patron.  Cardinal  Farnese,  was 
compelled  to  separate  the  brothers.  Their  fate  is  strik- 
ing :  Agostino,  divided  from  his  brother  Annibal,  sunk 
into  dejection  and  melancholy,  and  perished  by  a  prema- 
ture death,  while  Annibal  closed  his  days  not  long  after 
in  a  state  of  distraction.  The  brothers  of  Nature  and 
Aii;  could  not  live  together,  and  could  not  live  separate. 
The  history  of  artists  abounds  with  instances  of  jeal- 
ousy, perhaps  more  than  that  of  any  other  class  of  men 
of  genius.  Hudson,  the  master  of  Reynolds,  could  not 
endure  the  sight  of  his  rising  pupil,  and  would  not 
suffer  him  to  conclude  the  term  of  his  apprenticeship; 
even  the  mild  and  elegant  Reynolds  himself  became  so 
jealous  of  Wilson,  that  he  took  every  opportunity  of 
depreciating  his  singular  excellence.  Stung  by  the  mad- 
ness of  jealousy,  Barry  one  day  addressing  Sir  Joshua 
on  his  lectures,  burst  out,  "  Such  poor  flimsy  stuff  as  your 
discourses !"  clenching  his  fist  in  the  agony  of  the  con- 
vulsion. After  the  death  of  the  great  artist,  Barry  be- 
stowed on  him  the  most  ardent  culogium,  and  deeply 
grieved  over  the  past.  But  the  race  of  genius  born  too 
"near  the  sun"  have  found  their  increased  sensibility 
flame  into  crimes  of  a  deeper  dye — crimes  attesting  the 
treachery  and  the  violence  of  the  professors  of  an  art 
which,  it  appears,  in  softening  the  souls  of  others,  does 
not  necessarily  mollify  those  of  the  artists  themselves. 

*  Soo  an  article  on  tho  Carracci  in  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  ii. 


JEALOUSY   OF   ARTISTS.  211 

Tlie  dreadful  story  of  Andrea  del  Castagno  seems  not 
doubtful.  Having  been  taught  the  discovery  of  painting 
in  oil  by  Doraenico  Venetiano,  yet,  still  envious  of  the 
merit  of  the  generous  friend  who  had  confided  that  great 
secret  to  him,  Andrea  with  his  own  hand  secretly  assas- 
sinated him,  that  he  might  remain  without  a  rival.  The 
horror  of  his  crime  only  appeared  in  his  confession  on  his 
death-bed.  Domenichino  seems  to  have  been  poisoned  for 
the  preference  he  obtained  over  the  Neapolitan  artists, 
which  raised  them  to  a  man  against  him,  and  reduced 
him  to  the  necessity  of  preparing  his  food  with  his  own 
hand.  On  his  last  return  to  Naples,  Passeri  says,  "  JSTon 
fu  ynal piib  vechito  da  buon  occhio  da  quelli  Napoletani : 
e  U  Pittori  lo  detestavano  percM  egli  era  ritornato — mori 
con  qiialche  sospetto  di  veleno,  e  questo  non  b  inverisimile 
perclii,  I'interesso  b  un  perjido  tiranno.''''  So  that  the 
Neapolitans  honoured  Genius  at  Naples  by  poison,  which 
they  might  have  forgotten  had  it  flourished  at  Rome. 
The  famous  cartoon  of  the  battle  of  Pisa,  a  work  of  Mi- 
chael Angelo,  which  he  produced  in  a  glorious  competi- 
tion with  the  Homer  of  painting,  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  and 
in  which  he  had  struck  out  the  idea  of  a  new  style,  is 
only  known  by  a  print  which  has  preserved  the  wonder- 
ful composition ;  for  the  original,  it  is  said,  was  cut  into 
pieces  by  the  mad  jealousy  of  Baccio  Bandinelli,  whose 
whole  life  was  made  miserable  by  his  consciousness  of  a 
superior  rival. 

In  the  jealousy  of  genius,  however,  there  is  a  peculiar 
case  where  the  fever  silently  consumes  the  sufferer,  'with- 
out possessing  the  malignant  character  of  the  disease. 
Even  the  gentlest  temper  declines  under  its  slow  wast- 
ings,  and  this  infection  may  happen  among  dear  friends, 
whenever  a  man  of  genius  loses  that  self-opinion  which 
animates  his  solitary  labours  and  constitutes  his  happi- 
ness. Perhaps  when  at  the  height  of  his  class,  he  sud- 
denly views  himself  eclipsed  by  another  genius — and  that 


212  LITER  A.EY  CHARACTER. 

genius  his  friend  !  This  is  tlie  jealousy,  not  of  hatred, 
but  of  despair.  Churchill  observed  the  feeling,  but 
probably  included  in  it  a  greater  degree  of  malignancy 
than  I  would  now  describe. 

Envy  which  turns  pale, 
And  sickens  even  if  a  friend  prevail. 

Swift,  in  that  curious  poem  on  his  own  death,  said  of 

Pope  that 

He  can  in  one  couplet  fix 
More  sense  than  J  can  do  in  six. 

The  Dean,  perhaps,  is  not  quite  serious,  but  probably  is 
in  the  next  lines — 

It  gives  me  such  a  jealous  fit, 

I  cry  "  Pox  take  him  and  his  •wit." 

If  the  reader  pursue  this  hint  throughout  the  poem,  these 
compliments  to  his  friends,  always  at  his  own  expense, 
exhibit  a  singular  mixture  of  the  sensibility  and  the 
frankness  of  true  genius,  which  Swift  himself  has  honestly 

confessed. 

"Wliat  poet  would  not  grieve  to  see 
His  brother  write  as  well  as  he?* 

Addison  experienced  this  painful  and  mixed  emotion 
in  his  intercourse  with  Pope,  to  whose  rising  celebrity 
he  soon  became  too  jealously  alive.f  It  was  more 
tenderly,  but  not  less  keenly,  felt  by  the  Spanish  artist 
Castillo,  a  man  distinguished  by  every  amiable  disposi- 
tion. He  was  the  great  painter  of  Seville;  but  when 
some  of  his  nephew  Murillo's  paintings  were  shown  to 
him,  he  stood  in  meek  astonishment  before    them,  and 

♦  The  plain  motive  of  all  these  dislikes  is  still  more  amusing,  as  given 
in  this  couplet  of  the  same  poem : — 

"If  with  such  genius  heaven  has  blest  'em, 
Have  I  not  reason  to  detest  'crn." — Ed. 
f  See  article  on  Pope  and  Addison  iu  "  Quarrels  of  Authors." 


WANT   OF  MUTUAL  ESTEEM.  213 

turning  away,  he  exclaimed  with  a  sigh — ''Tel  murlo 
Castillo  /"  Castillo  is  no  more !  Returning  home,  the 
stricken  genius  relinquished  his  pencil,  and  pined  away 
in  hopelessness.  The  same  occurrence  happened  to 
Pietro  Perugino,  the  master  of  Raphael,  whose  general 
character  as  a  painter  was  so  entirely  eclipsed  by  his  far- 
renowned  scholar ;  yet,  while  his  real  excellences  in  the 
ease  of  his  attitudes  and  the  mild  grace  of  his  female 
countenances  have  been  passed  over,  it  is  probable  that 
Raphael  himself  might  have  caught  from  them  his  first 
feelings  of  ideal  beauty. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 


"Want  of  mutual  esteem  among  men  of  genius  often  originates  in  a  defi- 
ciency of  analogous  ideas. — It  is  not  always  envy  or  jealousy  which 
induces  men  of  genius  to  undervalue  each  other. 

AMONG  men  of  genius,  that  want  of  mutual  esteem, 
usually  attributed  to  envy  or  jealousy,  often  orig- 
inates in  a  deficiency  of  analogous  ideas,  or  of  sympathy, 
in  the  parties.  On  this  principle,  several  ciirious  phe- 
nomena in  the  history  of  genius  may  be  explained. 

Every  man  of  genius  has  a  manner  of  his  own;  a 
mode  of  thinking  and  a  habit  of  style,  and  usually 
decides  on  a  work  as  it  approximates  or  varies  from  his 
own.  When  one  great  author  depreciates  another,  his 
depreciation  has  often  no  worse  source  than  his  ovra 
taste.  The  witty  Cowley  despised  the  natural  Chaucer; 
the  austere  classical  Boileau  the  rough  sublimity  of  Cre- 
billon ;  the  refining  Marivaux  the  familiar  Moliere.  Field- 
ing ridiculed  Richardson,  whose  manner  so  strongly  con- 
trasted with  his  own  ;  and  Richardson  contemned  Field- 
ing, and  declared  he  would  not  last.    Cumberland  escaped 


214:  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

a  fit  of  iinforgiveness,  not  living  to  read  his  own  char- 
acter by  Bishop  Watson,  whose  logical  head  tried  the 
lighter  elegancies  of  that  polished  man  by  his  own  nervous 
genius,  destitute  of  the  beautiful  in  taste.  There  was  no 
envy  in  the  breast  of  Johnson  when  he  advised  Mrs. 
Thrale  not  to  purchase  "  Gray's  Letters,"  as  trifling  and 
dull,  no  more  than  there  was  in  Gray  himself  when  he 
sunk  the  poetical  character  of  Shenstone,  and  debased 
his  simplicity  and  purity  of  feeling  by  an  image  of  ludi- 
crous contempt.  I  have  heard  that  Wilkes,  a  mere  wit 
and  elegant  scholar,  used  to  treat  Gibbon  as  a  mere 
bookmaker;  and  applied  to  that  philosophical  historian 
the  verse  by  which  Voltaire  described,  with  so  mu'ch 
caustic  facetiousness,  the  genius  of  the  Abbe  Trablet — 

H  a  compile,  compile,  compile. 

The  deficient  sympathy  in  these  men  of  genius  for 
modes  of  feeling  opposite  to  their  own  was  the  real  cause 
of  their  opinions;  and  thus  it  happens  that  even  su- 
perior genius  is  so  often  liable  to  be  unjust  and  false  in 
its  decisions. 

The  same  principle  operates  still  more  strikingly  in 
the  remarkable  contempt  of  men  of  genius  for  those  pur- 
suits which  require  talents  distinct  from  their  own,  and 
a  cast  of  mind  thrown  by  nature  into  another  mould. 
Hence  we  must  not  be  surprised  at  the  poetical  antipa- 
thies of  Selden  and  Locke,  as  well  as  Longuerue  and 
Buffbn.  Newton  called  poetry  "  ingenious  nonsense." 
On  the  other  side,  poets  undervalue  the  pursuits  of  the 
antiquary,  the  naturalist,  and  the  metaphysician,  form- 
ing their  estimate  by  their  own  favourite  scale  of  imagina- 
tion. As  we  can  only  understand  in  the  degree  we  com- 
prehend, and  feel  in  the  degree  in  which  we  sympathize, 
we  may  be  sure  that  in  both  these  cases  the  parties  will 
be  found  altogether  deficient  in  those  qualities  of  genius 
which  constitute  the  excellence  of   the  other.     To  this 


PREJUDICES  OF  GENIUS.  215 

cause,  rather  than  to  the  one  the  friends  of  Mickle  ascribed 
to  Adam  Smith,  namely,  a  personal  dislike  to  the  poet, 
may  we  place  the  severe  mortification  which  the  unfor- 
tunate translator  of  Camoens  suffered  from  the  person  to 
whom  he  dedicated  "  The  Lusiad."  The  Duke  of  Buc- 
cleugh  was  the  pupil  of  the  great  political  economist, 
and  so  little  valued  an  ej)ic  poem,  that  his  Grace  had  not 
even  the  curiosity  to  open  the  leaves  of  the  presentation 
copy. 

A  professor  of  jDolite  literature  condemned  the  study  of 
botany,  as  adapted  to  mediocrity  of  talent,  and  only  de- 
manding patience ;  but  Linnaeus  showed  how  a  man  of 
genius  becomes  a  creator  even  in  a  science  which  seems 
to  depend  only  on  order  and  method-  It  will  not  be  a 
question  with  some  whether  a  man  must  be  endowed 
with  the  energy  and  aptitude  of  genius,  to  excel  in  anti- 
quarianism,  in  natural  history,  and  similar  pursuits.  The 
prejudices  raised  against  the  claims  of  such  to  the  honours 
of  genius  have  probably  arisen  from  the  secluded  nature 
of  their  pursuits,  and  the  little  knowledge  which  the  men 
of  wit  and  imagination  possess  of  these  persons,  who  live 
in  a  society  of  their  own.  On  this  subject  a  very  curious 
circumstance  has  been  revealed  respecting  Peiresc,  whose 
enthusiasm  for  science  was  long  felt  throughout  Europe, 
His  name  was  known  in  every  country,  and  his  death  was 
lamented  in  forty  languages  ;  yet  was  this  great  literary 
character  unknown  to  several  men  of  genius  in  his  own 
country ;  Rochefoucauld  declared  he  had  never  heard  of 
his  name,  and  Malherbe  wondered  why  his  death  created 
BO  universal  a  sensation. 

Madame  De  Stael  Avas  an  experienced  observer  of  the 
habits  of  the  literary  character,  and  she  has  remarked 
how  one  student  usually  revolts  from  the  other  when 
their  occupations  are  different,  because  they  are  a  recipro- 
cal annoyance.  The  scholar  has  nothing  to  say  to  the 
poet,  the  poet  to  the  natui'alist  •  and  even  among  men  of 


216  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

science,  those  who  are  differently  occupied  avoid  each 
other,  taking  little  interest  in  what  is  out  of  their  own 
circle.  Thus  we  see  the  classes  of  literature,  like  the 
planets,  revolving  as  distinct  worlds ;  and  it  would  not 
be  less  absurd  for  the  inhabitants  of  Venus  to  treat  with 
contempt  the  powers  and  faculties  of  those  of  Jupiter, 
than  it  is  for  the  men  of  wit  and  imagination  those  of  the 
men  of  knowledge  and  curiosity.  The  wits  are  incapable 
of  exerting  the  peculiar  qualities  which  give  a  real  value 
to  these  pursuits,  and  therefore  they  must  remain  igno- 
rant of  their  nature  and  their  result. 

It  is  not  then  always  envy  or  jealousy  which  induces 
men  of  genius  to  undervalue  each  other ;  the  want  of 
sympathy  will  sufficiently  account  for  the  want  of 
judgment.  Suppose  Newton,  Quinault,  and  Machiavel 
accidentally  meeting  together,  and  unknown  to  each 
other,  would  they  not  soon  have  desisted  from  the  vain 
attempt  of  communicating  their  ideas  ?  The  philosopher 
woiild  have  condemned  the  poet  of  the  Graces  as  an  in- 
tolerable trifler,  and  the  author  of  "  The  Prince"  as  a  dark 
political  spy.  Machiavel  would  have  conceived  Newton 
to  be  a  dreamer  among  the  stars,  and  a  mere  almanack- 
maker  among  men ;  and  the  other  a  rhymer,  nauseously 
doucereux.  Quinault  might  have  imagined  that  he  was 
seated  between  two  madmen.  Having  annoyed  each 
other  for  some  time,  they  would  have  relieved  their  ennui 
by  reciprocal  contempt,  and  each  have  parted  with  a  de- 
termination to  avoid  hence  forward  two  such  disagreeable 
companions. 


SELF-PRAISE.  217 


CHAPTER    XV  = 

Self-praise  of  genius. — The  love  of  praise  instinctive  in  the  nature  of 
genius. — A  high  opinion  of  themselves  necessary  for  their  great 
designs. — The  Ancients  openly  claimed  their  own  praise.— And 
several  Moderns. — An  author  knows  more  of  his  merits  than  his 
readers. — And  less  of  his  defects. — Authors  versatile  in  their  admi- 
ration and  their  mahgnity. 

YAISTITT,  egotism,  a  strong  sense  of  their  own  suffi- 
ciency, foiTU  another  accusation  against  men  of  genius ; 
hut  the  complexion  of  self-praise  must  alter  with  the  occa- 
sion ;  for  the  simplicity  of  truth  may  appear  vanity,  and  the 
consciousness  of  superiority  seem  envy — to  Mediocrity. 
It  is  we  who  do  nothing,  and  cannot  even  imagine  any- 
thing to  be  done,  who  are  so  much  displeased  with 
self-lauding,  self-love,  self-independence,  self-admiration, 
which  with  the  man  of  genius  may  often  be  nothing  but 
an  ostensible  modification  of  the  passion  of  glory. 

He  who  exults  in  himself  is  at  least  in  earnest ;  but  he 
who  refuses  to  receive  that  praise  in  public  for  which  he 
has  devoted  so  much  labour  in  his  privacy,  is  not ;  for  he 
is  compelled  to  sujDpress  the  very  instinct  of  his  nature. 
We  censure  no  man  for  loving  fame,  but  only  for  showing 
us  how  much  he  is  possessed  by  the  passion :  thus  we 
allow  him  to  create  the  appetite,  but  we  deny  him  its  ali- 
ment. Our  efieminate  minds  are  the  willing  dupes  of 
what  is  called  the  modesty  of  genius,  or,  as  it  has  been 
termed,  "  the  polished  reserve  of  modern  times ;"  and  this 
from  the  selfish  principle  that  it  serves  at  least  to  keep  out 
of  the  company  its  j)ainful  pre-eminence.  But  this  "  pol- 
ished reserve,"  like  something  as  fashionable,  the  ladies' 
roiige,  at  first  appearing  with  rather  too  much  colour, 
will  in  the  heat  of  an  evening  die  away  till  the  true  com- 
plexion come  out.     What  subterfuges  are  resorted  to  by 


218  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

these  pretended  modest  men  of  genius,  to  extort  that 
praise  from  their  private  circle  which  is  thus  openly  de- 
nied them !  They  have  been  taken  by  surprise  enlarg- 
ing their  own  panegyric,  which  might  rival  Pliny's  on 
Trajan,  for  care  and  copiousness ;  or  impudently  veiling 
themselves  with  the  transparency  of  a  third  person ;  or 
never  j)refixing  their  name  to  the  volume,  which  they 
would  not  easily  forgive  a  friend  to  pass  unnoticed. 

Self-love  is  a  principle  of  action ;  but  among  no  class 
of  human  beings  has  nature  so  profusely  distributed  this 
principle  of  life  and  action  as  through  the  whole  sensitive^ 
family  of  genius.  It  reaches  even  to  a  feminine  suscepti- 
bility. The  love  of  praise  is  instinctive  in  their  natm-e. 
Praise  with  them  is  the  evidence  of  the  past  and  the 
pledge  of  the  future.  The  generous  qualities  and  tlie 
virtues  of  a  man  of  genius  are  really  produced  by  the 
applause  conferred  on  him.  "  To  him  whom  the  world 
admu-es,  the  happiness  of  the  world  must  be  dear,"  said 
Madame  De  Stiiel.  Romney,  the  painter,  held  as  a 
maxim  that  every  diffident  artist  required  "almost  a 
daily  jjortion  of  cheering  applause."  How  often  do  such 
find  their  powers  jDaralysed  by  the  depression  of  confi- 
dence or  the  appearance  of  neglect !  When  the  North 
Americans  Indians,  amid  their  circle,  chant  their  gods 
and  their  heroes,  the  honest  savages  laud  the  living  wor- 
thies, as  well  as  their  departed ;  and  when,  as  we  are 
told,  an  auditor  hears  the  shout  of  his  own  name  ;  he  an- 
swers by  a  cry  of  pleasure  and  of  pride.  The  savage  and 
the  man  of  genius  are  here  true  to  nature,  but  pleasure 
and  pride  in  his  own  name  must  raise  no  emotion  in  the 
breast  of  genius  amidst  a  polished  circle.  To  bring  him- 
self down  to  their  usual  mediocrity,  he  must  start  at  an 
expression  of  regard,  and  turn  away  even  from  one  of  his 
own  votaries.  Madame  De  Stiiel,  an  exquisite  judge  of 
the  feelings  of  the  literary  character,  was  aware  of  this 
cliange,  whicli  has  rather  occurred  in  our  manners  than 


I 


SELF-PRAISE.  219 

in  men  of  genius  themselves.  "  Envy,"  says  that  eloquent 
writer,  "  among  the  Greeks,  existed  sometimes  between 
rivals ;  it  has  now  passed  to  the  spectators ;  and  by  a 
strange  singularity  the  mass  of  men  are  jealous  of  tho 
efforts  which  are  tried  to  add  to  their  pleasures  or  to 
merit  their  approbation." 

But  this,  it  seems,  is  not  always  the  case  with  men  of 
genius,  since  the  accusation  we  are  noticing  has  been  so 
often  reiterated.  Take  from  some  that  supreme  confi- 
dence in  themselves,  that  pride  of  exultation,  and  you 
crush  the  germ  of  their  excellence.  Many  vast  designs 
must  have  perished  in  the  conception,  had  not  their 
authors  breathed  this  vital  air  of  self-delight,  this  crea- 
tive spirit,  so  operative  in  great  undertakings.  We  have 
recently  seen  this  principle  in  the  literary  character 
unfold  itself  in  the  life  of  the  late  Bishop  of  Landaff. 
Whatever  he  did,  he  felt  it  was  done  as  a  master :  what- 
ever he  wrote,  it  was,  as  he  once  declared,  the  best  work 
on  the  subject  yet  written.  With  this  feeling  he  emu- 
lated Cicero  in  retirement  or  in  action.  "  When  I  an? 
dead,  you  will  not  soon  meet  with  another  John  Hun- 
ter," said  the  great  anatomist  to  one  of  his  garrulous" 
friends.  An  apology  is  formed  by  his  biographer  for  re- 
lating the  fact,  but  the  weakness  is  only  in  the  apology. 
When  Hogarth  was  engaged  in  his  work  of  the  Mariagt 
d-la-Mode,  he  said  to  Reynolds,  "  I  shall  very  soon  gratify 
the  world  with  such  a  sight  as  they  have  never  seen 
equalled." — "  One  of  his  foibles,"  adds  Northcote,  "  it  is 
well  known,  was  the  excessive  high  opinion  he  had  of  his 
own  abilities."  So  pronoimced  Northcote,  who  had  not 
an  atom  of  his  genius.  Was  it  a  foible  in  Hogarth  to 
cast  the  glove,  when  he  always  more  than  redeemed  the 
pledge?  Corneille  has  given  a  very  noble  full-length 
of  the  sublime  egotism  which  accompanied  him  through 
life  ;*  but  I  doubt,  if  we  had  any  such  author  in  the  pres- 

*  See  it  versified  in  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  i.,  p.  431 


220  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

ent  day,  whether  he  would  dare  to  be  so  just  to  himself, 
and  so  hardy  to  the  public.  The  self-praise  of  Buffon 
at  least  equalled  his  genius ;  and  the  inscription  beneath 
his  statue  in  the  library,  of  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  which 
I  have  been  told  was  raised  to  him  in  his  lifetime,  exceeds 
all  panegyric ;  it  places  him  alone  in  nature,  as  the  first 
and  the  last  interpreter  of  her  works.  He  said  of  the 
great  geniuses  of  modern  ages,  that  "  there  were  not 
more  than  five ;  ISTewton,  Bacon,  Leibnitz,  Montesquieu, 
and  Myself"  With  this  spirit  he  conceived  and  termi- 
nated his  great  works,  and  sat  in  patient  meditation  at 
his  desk  for  half  a  century,  till  all  Europe,  even  in  a  state 
of  war,  bowed  to  the  modern  Pliny. 

Nor  is  the  vanity  of  Bufibn,  and  Voltaire,  and  Rous- 
seau purely  national ;  for  men  of  genius  in  all  ages  have 
expressed  a  consciousness  of  the  internal  force  of  genius. 
No  one  felt  this  self-exultation  more  potent  than  our 
Hobbes  ;  who  has  indeed,  in  his  controversy  with  Wallis, 
asserted  that  there  may  be  nothing  more  just  than  self- 
commendation,*  There  is  a  curious  passage  in  the  "  Pur- 
gatorio "  of  Dante,  where,  describing  the  transitory 
nature  of  literary  fame,  and  the  variableness  of  human 
oj)inion,  the  poet  alludes  with  confidence  to  his  own  future 
greatness.  Of  two  authors  of  the  name  of  Guido,  the 
one  having  eclipsed  the  othei",  the  poet  writes : — 

Cosi  ha  tolto  I'lino  all'  altro  Guido 
La  Gloria  dclla  lingua;  o  forse  e  nato 
Chi  Vuno  e  V altro  caccerd  di  nido. 

Thus  has  one  Guido  from  the  other  snatched 
The  Ictter'd  pride ;  and  he  perhaps  is  horn 
Wlio  shall  drive  either  from  their  nest.\ 

Dc  Thou,  one  of  the  most  noble-minded  of  historians, 
in  tlie  JMcmoirs  of  his  own  life,  composed  in  the  third 
person,  has  surprised  and  somewhat  puzzled  the  critics, 

*  See  "Quarrels  of  Authors,"  p.  471.  f  Cary. 


SELF-PRAISE.  221 

by  that  frequent  distribution  of  self-commenclation  which 
they  knew  not  how  to  reconcile  with  the  modesty  and 
gravity  with  which  the  President  was  so  amply  endowed. 
After  his  great  and  solemn  labour,  amidst  the  injustice  of 
his  persecutors,  this  eminent  man  had  sufficient  experi- 
ence of  his  real  worth  to  assert  it.  Kepler,  amidst  his 
sublime  discoveries,  looks  down  like  a  superior  being  on 
other  men.  He  breaks  forth  in  glory  and  daring  egotism : 
"  I  dare  insult  mankind  by  confessing  that  I  am  he  who 
has  turned  science  to  advantage.  If  I  am  pardoned,  I 
shall  rejoice  ;  if  blamed,  I  shall  endure.  The  die  is  cast ; 
I  have  written  this  book,  and  whether  it  be  read  by  pos- 
terity or  by  my  contemporaries  is  of  no  consequence ;  it 
may  well  wait  for  a  reader  during  one  century,  when 
God  himself  during  six  thousand  years  has  not  sent  an 
observer  like  myself."  He  truly  predicts  that  "  his  dis- 
coveries would  be  verified  in  succeeding  ages ;"  and  pre- 
fers his  own  glory  to  the  possession  of  the  electorate  of 
Saxony.  It  was  this  solitary  majesty,  this  futurity  of 
theii*  genius,  which  hovered  over  the  sleepless  pillow  of 
Bacon,  of  Newton,  and  of  Montesquieu ;  of  Ben  Jonson, 
of  Milton,  and  Corneille ;  and  of  Michael  Angelo.  Such 
men  anticipate  their  contemporaries ;  they  know  they  are 
creators,  long  before  they  are  hailed  as  such  by  the  tardy 
consent  of  the  public.  These  men  stand  on  Pisgah 
heights,  and  for  them  the  sun  shines  on  a  land  which 
none  can  view  but  themselves. 

There  is  an  admirable  essay  in  Plutarch,  "  On  the 
manner  by  which  we  may  praise  ourselves  without  ex- 
citing envy  in  others."  The  sage  seems  to  consider  self- 
praise  as  a  kind  of  illustrious  impudence,  and  has  one 
very  striking  image :  he  compares  these  eulogists  to  fam- 
ished persons,  who  finding  no  other  food,  in  their  rage 
have  eaten  their  own  flesh,  and  thus  shockingly  nour- 
ished themselves  by  their  own  substance.  He  allows 
persons   in   high  office  to  praise  themselves,  if  by  this 


222  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

they  can  repel  calumny  and  accusations,  as  did  Pericles 
before  the  Athenians :  but  the  Romans  found  fault  with 
Cicero,  wlio  so  frequently  reminded  them  of  his  exertions 
in  the  conspiracy  of  Catiline ;  while,  when  Scipio  told 
them  that  "  they  should  not  presume  to  judge  of  a  citizen 
to  whom  they  owed  the  power  of  judging  all  men,"  the 
people  covered  themselves  with  flowers,  and  followed 
him  to  the  capitol  to  join  in  a  thanksgiving  to  Jove. 
"  Cicero,"  adds  Plutarch,  "  praised  himself  without  neces- 
sity. Scipio  was  in  personal  danger,  and  this  took  away 
what  is  odious  in  self-praise."  An  author  seems  some- 
times to  occupy  the  situation  of  a  person  in  high  office ; 
and  there  may  be  occasions  when  with  a  noble  simplicity, 
if  he  appeal  to  his  works,  of  which  all  men  may  judge, 
he  may  be  permitted  to  assert  or  to  maintain  his  claims. 
It  has  at  least  been  the  practice  of  men  of  genius,  for  in 
this  very  essay  we  find  Timotheus,  Euripides,  and  Pindar 
censured,  though  they  deserved  all  the  praise  they  gave 
themselves. 

Ej^icurus,  writing  to  a  minister  of  state,  declares,  "  If 
you  desire  glory,  nothing  can  bestow  it  more  than  the 
letters  I  write  to  you:"  and  Seneca,  in  quoting  these 
words,  adds,  "What  Epicurus  pi-omised  to  his  friends, 
that,  my  Lucilius,  I  promise  you."  Orna  me!  was  the 
constant  cry  of  Cicero;  and  he  desires  the  historian 
Lucceius  to  write  separately  the  consj^iracy  of  Catiline, 
and  to  publish  quickly,  that  while  he  yet  lived  he  might 
taste  the  sweetness  of  his  glory.  Horace  and  Ovid  were 
equally  sensible  to  their  immortality ;  but  what  modern 
poet  would  bo  tolerated  with  such  an  avowal?  Yet 
Dryden  honestly  declares  that  it  was  better  for  liim  to 
own  tliis  foiling  of  vanity,  than  the  world  to  do  it  for 
him ;  and  adds,  "  For  what  other  reason  have  I  spent  my 
life  in  so  unprofitable  a  study  ?  Why  am  I  grown  old  in 
seeking  so  barren  a  reward  as  fame  ?  The  same  parts 
and  application  which  have  made  me  a  poet  might 'have 


SELF-PRAISE.  223 

raised  me  to  any  honours  of  the  gown."  "Was  not  Cer- 
vantes very  sensible  to  liis  OAvn  merits  when  a  rival 
staitecl  up  ?  and  did  he  not  assert  them  too,  and  distin- 
guish his  own  work  by  a  handsome  compliment  ?  Lope 
de  Vega  celebrated  his  own  poetic  powers  under  the 
pseudonyme  of  a  pretended  editor,  Tliomas  Barguillos. 
I  regi-et  that  his  noble  biographer,  than  whom  no  one  can 
more  truly  sympathise  with  the  emotions  of  genius,  has 
censured  the  bard  for  his  querulous  or  his  intrepid  tone, 
and  for  the  quaint  conceit  of  his  title-page,  where  his 
detractor  is  introduced  as  a  beetle  in  a  ve(/a  or  garden, 
attacking  its  flowers,  but  expiring  in  the  very  sweetness 
he  would  injure.  The  inscription  under  Boileau's  por- 
trait, which  gives  a  preference  to  the  French  satirist  over 
Juvenal  and  Horace,  is  known  to  have  been  written  by 
himself.  Nor  was  Butler  less  proud  of  his  own  merits ; 
for  he  has  done  ample  justice  to  his  "Hudibras,"  and 
traced  out,  with  great  self-delight,  its  variety  of  excel- 
lences. Richardson,  the  novelist,  exhibits  one  of  the 
most  striking  instances  of  what  is  called  literary  vanity, 
the  delight  of  an  author  in  his  works  ;  he  has  pointed  out 
all  the  beauties  of  his  three  great  works,  in  various  man- 
ners.* He  always  taxed  a  visitor  by  one  of  his  long 
letters.  It  was  this  intense  self-delight  which  produced 
his  voluminous  labours. 

There  are  certain  authors  whose  very  existence  seems 
to  require  a  high  conception  of  their  own  talents ;  and 
who  must,  as  some  animals  appear  to  do,  furnish  the 
means  of  life  out  of  their  own  substance.  These  men  of 
genius  open  their  career  with  peculiar  tastes,  or  with  a 
predilection  for  some  great  work  of  no  immediate  inter- 
est ;  in  a  word,  with  many  unpopular  dispositions.  Yet 
we  see  them  magnanimous,  though  defeated,  proceeding 
with  the   public  feeling  against   them.     At  length  we 

*  I  have  observed  them  in  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  64. 


224:  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

view  them  ranking  with  their  rivals.  Without  having 
yielded  up  their  peculiar  tastes  or  their  incorrigible 
viciousness,  they  have,  however,  heightened  their  indi- 
vidual excellences.  No  human  opinion  can  change  their 
self-opinion.  Alive  to  the  consciousness  of  their  powers, 
their  pursuits  are  placed  above  impediment,  and  their 
great  views  can  suffer  no  contraction ;  possunt  quia  posse 
videntur.  Such  was  the  language  Lord  Bacon  once  ap- 
plied to  himself  when  addressing  a  king.  "  I  know,"  said 
the  great  philosopher,  "  that  I  am  censured  of  some  con- 
ceit of  my  ability  or  worth;  but  I  pi'ay  your  majesty  im- 
pute it  to  desire — possunt  quia  2^osse  videntur.''''  These 
men  of  genius  bear  a  charmed  mail  on  their  breast; 
"  hopeless,  not  heartless,"  may  be  often  the  motto  of 
their  ensign ;  and  if  they  do  not  always  possess  reputa- 
tion, they  still  look  onwards  for  fame ;  for  these  do  not 
necessarily  accompany  each  other. 

An  author  is  more  sensible  of  his  own  merits,  as  he  also 
is  of  his  labour,  which  is  invisible  to  all  others,  while  he 
is  unquestionably  much  less  sensible  to  his  defects  than 
most  of  his  readers.  The  author  not  only  comprehends 
his  merits  better,  because  they  have  passsed  through  a 
long  process  in  his  mind,  but  he  is  familiar  with  every 
part,  while  the  reader  has  but  a  vague  notion  of  the 
whole.  Why  does  an  excellent  work,  by  repetition,  rise 
in  interest?  Because  in  obtaining  this  gradual  intimacy 
with  an  author,  we  appear  to  recover  half  the  genius 
which  we  had  lost  on  a  first  perusal.  The  work  of  genius 
too  is  associated,  in  the  mind  of  the  author,  with  much 
more  than  it  contains  ;  and  the  true  supplement,  which 
he  only  can  give,  has  not  always  accompanied  the  work 
itself  .We  find  great  men  often  greater  than  the  books 
they  write.  Ask  tlie  man  of  genius  if  he  have  written  all 
that  he  wished  to  have  written  ?  Has  he  satisfied  him- 
self in  this  Avork,  for  which  you  accuse  his  pride  ?  Has 
he  dared  what  required  intrej)idity  to  achieve  ?    Has  ho 


SELF-PRAISE.  225 

evaded  difficulties  which  he  should  have  overcome  ?  The 
mind  of  the  reader  has  the  limits  of  a  mere  recipient, 
while  that  of  the  author,  even  after  his  work,  is  teeming 
with  creation.  "  On  many  occasions,  my  soul  seems  to 
know  more  than  it  can  say,  and  to  be  endowed  with  a 
mind  by  itself,  far  superior  to  the  mind  I  really  have," 
said  Marivaux,  with  equal  truth  and  happiness. 

"With  these  explanations  of  what  are  called  the  vanity 
and  egotism  of  Genius,  be  it  remembered,  that  the  sense 
of  their  own  sufficiency  is  assumed  by  men  at  their  own 
risk.  The  great  man  who  thinks  greatly  of  himself,  is 
not  diminishing  that  greatness  in  heaj^ing  fuel  on  his 
fire.  It  is  indeed  otherwise  with  his  unlucky  brethren, 
with  whom  an  illusion  of  literary  vanity  may  end  in  the 
aberrations  of  harmless  madness ;  as  it  happened  to  Per- 
cival  Stockdale.  After  a  parallel  between  himself  and 
Charles  XII.  of  Sweden,  he  concludes  that  "  some  parts 
Avill  be  to  his  advantage,  and  some  to  mine  y"  but  in  re- 
gard to  fame,  the  main  object  between  himself  and 
Charles  XII.,  Percival  imagined  that  "  his  own  will  not 
probably  take  its  fixed  and  immovable  station,  and  shme 
with  its  expanded  and  permanent  splendour,  till  it  con- 
secrates his  ashes,  till  it  illumines  his  tomb."  After  this 
the  reader,  who  may  never  have  heard  of  the  name  of 
Percival  Stockdale,  must  be  told  that  there  exist  his  own 
"  Memoirs  of  his  Life  and  Writings."  *  The  memoirs  of 
a  scribbler  who  saw  the  prospects  of  life  close  on  him 
while  he  imagined  that  his  contemporaries  were  unjust, 
are  instructive  to  literary  men.  To  correct,  and  to  be 
corrected,  should  be  their  daily  practice,  that  they  may 
be  taught  not  only  to  exult  in  themselves,  but  to  fear 
themselves. 

It  is  hard  to  refuse  these  men  of  genius  that  aura 
vitalis,  of  which  they  are  so  apt  to  be  liberal  to  others. 

*  T  have  sketched  a  cliaracter  of  Percival  Stockdale,  iu  "  Calamities 
of  Authors"  (pp.  218-224) ;  it  was  taken  ad  vivum. 
15 


226  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

Are  they  not  acciised  of  the  meanest  adulations  ?  When 
a  young  -uTiter  experiences  the  notice  of  a  person  of  some 
eminence,  he  has  expressed  himself  in  language  which 
transcends  that  of  mortality.  A  finer  reason  than  reason 
itself  inspires  it.  The  sensation  has  been  expressed  with 
all  its  fulness  by  Milton : — 

The  debt  immense  of  endless  gratitude. 

Who  ever  pays  an  "  immense  debt "  in  small  sums  ? 
Every  man  of  genius  has  left  such  honourable  traces  of 
his  private  affections ;  from  Locke,  whose  dedication  of 
his  great  work  is  more  adulative  than  could  be  imagined 
from  a  temperate  philosopher,  to  Chih'chill,  whose  warm 
eulogiums  on  his  friends  beautifully  contrast  with  his 
satire.  Even  in  advanced  age,  the  man  of  genius  dwells 
on  the  praise  he  caught  in  his  youth  from  veteran  genius, 
which,  like  the  aloe,  will  flower  at  the  end  of  life.  When 
Vii-gil  was  yet  a  youth,  it  is  said  that  Cicero  heard  one  of 
his  eclogues,  and  exclaimed  with  his  accustomed  warmth, 

Magna  spes  altera  RomEe  1 

"  The  second  hope  of  mighty  Rome  !"  intending  by  the 
first  either  himself  or  Lucretius.  The  words  of  Cicero 
were  the  secret  honey  on  which  the  imagination  of  Virgil 
fed  for  many  a  year ;  for  in  one  of  his  latest  productions, 
the  twelfth  book  of  the  ^neid,  he  applies  these  very 
words  to  Ascanius.  So  long  had  the  accents  of  Cicero's 
praise  lingered  in  the  poet's  ear ! 

This  extreme  susceptibility  of  praise  in  men  of  genius 
is  the  same  exuberant  sensibility  which  is  so  alive  to  cen- 
sure. I  have  elsewhere  fully  shown  how  some  have  died 
of  criticism.*  The  self-love  of  genius  is  perhaps  much 
more  delicate  than  gross. 

But  this  fatal  susceptibility  is  the  cause  of  that  strange 
facility  which  has  often   astonished  the  world,  by  the 

*  In  the  article  entitled  "Anecdotes  of  Censured  Authors,"  in  vol 
I.  of  "  Curiosities  of  Literature." 


SENSITIVENESS   OF   GENIUS.  227 

sudden  transitions  of  sentiment  wliicli  literary  characters 
have  frequently  exhibited.  They  have  eulogised  men 
and  events  which  they  had  rej)robated,  and  reprobated 
what  they  had  eulogised.  The  recent  history  of  political 
revolutions  has  furnished  some  monstrous  examples  of 
this  subservience  to  power.  Guicciardini  records  one  of 
his  own  times,  which  has  been  often  repeated  in  ours. 
Jovianus  Pontanus,  the  Secretary  of  Ferdinand,  King  of 
Naples,  was  also  selected  to  be  the  tutor  of  the  j^rince, 
his  son.  When  Charles  VIIL  of  France  invaded  Naples, 
Pontanus  was  deputed  to  address  the  French  conqueror. 
To  render  himself  agreeable  to  the  enemies  of  his  coun- 
try, he  did  not  avoid  expatiating  on  the  demerits  of  his 
expelled  patrons  :  "  So  difficult  it  is,"  adds  the  grave 
and  dignified  historian,  "  for  ourselves  to  observe  that 
moderation  and  those  precepts  which  no  man  knew  bet- 
ter than  Pontanus,  who  was  endowed  with  such  copious 
literature,  and  composed  with  siich  facility  in  moral  phi- 
losophy, aud  possessed  such  acquirements  in  universal 
erudition,  that  he  had  made  himself  a  prodigy  to  the  eye 
of  the  world."*  The  student,  occupied  by  abstract  pur- 
suits, may  not  indeed  always  take  much  interest  in  the 
change  of  dynasties ;  and  perhaps  the  famous  cancelled 
dedication  to  Cromwell,  by  the  learned  orientalist.  Dr. 
Castelljf  who  sujDplied  its  place  by  another  to  Charles  II., 
ought  not  to  be  placed  to  the  account  of  political  tergiv- 
ersation. But  the  versatile  adoration  of  the  continental 
savans  of  the  republic  or  the  monarchy,  the  consul  or  the 
emperor,  has  inflicted  an  unhealing  wound  on  the  literary 
character;  since,  like  Pontanus,  to  gratify  their  new 
master,  they  had  not  the  greatness  of  mind  to  save  them- 
selves from  ingratitude  to  their  old. 

*  G-uicciardini,  Book  II. 

•)•  For  the  melancholy  history  of  this  devoted  scholar,  see  note  to  the 
article  on  "  The  Rewards  of  Oriental  Students,"  in  "  Calamities  of  Au- 
thors," p.  189. 


228  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Their  vengeance,  as  quickly  kindled,  lasts  as  long. 
Genius  is  a  dangerous  gift  of  nature.  The  same  efferves- 
cent passions  from  a  Catiline  or  a  Cicero.  Plato  lays 
great  stress  on  his  man  of  genius  possessing  the  most 
vehement  passions,  but  he  adds  reason  to  restrain  them. 
It  is  Imagination  which  by  their  side  stands  as  their 
good  or  evil  spirit.  Glory  or  infamy  is  but  a  different 
direction  of  the  same  passion. 

How  are  we  to  describe  symptoms  which,  flowing  from 
one  source,  yet  show  themselves  in  such  opposite  forms 
as  those  of  an  intermittent  fever,  a  silent  delirium,  or  a 
horrid  hypochondriasm  ?  Have  we  no  other  opiate  to  still 
the  agony,  no  other  coi'dial  to  warm  the  heai't,  than  the 
great  ingredient  in  the  recipe  of  Plato's  visionary  man 
of  genius — calm  reason  ?  Must  men,  who  so  rarely 
obtain  this  tardy  panacea,  remain  with  all  their  tortured 
and  torturing  passions  about  them,  often  self-disgusted, 
self-humiliated  ?  The  enemies  of  genius  are  often  connect- 
ed with  their  morbid  imagination.  These  originate  in 
casual  slights,  or  in  unguarded  expressions,  or  in  hasty 
oj)inions,  or  in  witty  derisions,  or  even  in  the  obtruding 
goodness  of  tender  admonition.  The  man  of  genius  broods 
over  the  phantom  that  darkens  his  feelings:  he  mul- 
tiplies a  single  object ;  he  magnifies  the  smallest  ;  and 
suspicions  become  certainties.  It  is  in  this  unhappy 
Etate  that  he  sharpens  his  vindictive  fangs,  in  a  libel 
called  his  "  Memoirs,"  or  in  another  species  of  public 
outrage,  styled  a  "  Criticism." 

We  are  told  that  Comines  the  historian,  when  residing 
at  the  court  of  tlie  Count  dc  Charolois,  afterwards  Duke 
of  Burgundy,  one  day  returning  from  hunting,  with  in- 
considei'ate  joculai-ity  sat  doAvn  before  the  Count  and 
ordered  the  prince  to  pull  off  his  boots.  The  Count 
would  not  affect  greatness,  and  having  executed  his  com- 
mission, in  return  for  the  princely  amusement,  the  Count 
dashed  the  boot  on  Comines'  nose,  which  bled  ;  and  from 


SENSITIVENESS  OF  GENIUS.  229 

that  time,  he  was  mortified  at  the  court  of  Burguncly, 
by  I'etaining  the  nickname  of  the  hooted  head.  The 
blow  rankled  in  the  heart  of  the  man  of  genius,  and  the 
Duke  of  Burgundy  has  come  down  to  us  in  Comines* 
"  Memoirs,"  blackened  by  his  vengeance.  Many,  un- 
known to  their  readers,  like  Comines,  have  had  a  booted 
head ;  but  the  secret  poison  is  distilled  on  their  lasting 
page,  as  we  have  recently  witnessed  in  Lord  Wal de- 
grave's  "  Memoirs."  Swift's  perpetual  malevolence  to 
Dryden  originated  ia  that  great  poet's  prediction,  that 
"cousin  Swift  would  never  be  a  poet ;"  a  prediction  which 
the  wit  never  could  forget.  I  have  elsewhere  fully  writ- 
ten a  tale  of  literary  hatred,  where  is  seen  a  man  of 
genius,  in  the  character  of  Gilbert  Stuart,  devoting  a 
whole  life  to  harassing  the  industry  or  the  genius  which 
he  himself  could  not  attain.* 

A  living  Italian  poet  of  great  celebrity,  when  at  the 
court  of  Rome,  presented  a  magnificent  edition  of  his 
poetry  to  Pius  VI.  The  bard,  Mr.  Hobhouse  informs  us, 
lived  not  ia  the  good  graces  of  his  holiness,  and  although 
the  pontiff  accepted  the  volume,  he  did  not  forbear  a 
severity  of  remark  which  could  not  fall  unheeded  by  the 
modern  poet ;  for  on  this  occasion,  repeating  some  verses 
of  Metastasio,  his  holiness  drily  added,  "  No  one  now-a- 
days  writes  like  that  great  poet."  IN'ever  was  this  to  be 
erased  from  memory ;  the  stifled  resentment  of  Monti 
vehemently  broke  forth  at  the  moment  the  French  car- 
ried off  Pius  VI.  from  Rome.  Then  the  long  indignant 
secretary  poured  forth  an  invective  more  severe  "  against 
the  great  harlot,"  than  was  ever  traced  by  a  Protestant 
pen — Monti  now  invoked  the  rock  of  Sardinia  ;  the  poet 
bade  it  fly  from  its  base,  that  the  last  of  monsters  might 
not  find  even  a  tomb  to  shelter  him.  Such  was  the  curse 
of  a  poet  on  his  former  patron,  now  an  object  of  misery, 
a  return  for  "  placing  him  below  Metastasio  !" 
*.  See  "Calamities  of  Authors,"  pp.  131-139. 


230  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

The  FrcQch  Revolution  affords  illustrations  of  the 
worst  human  passions.  "When  the  wretched  Collot 
D'Herhois  was  tossed  up  in  the  storm  to  the  summit  of 
power,  a  monstrous  imagination  seized  him  ;  he  project- 
ed razing  the  city  of  Lyons  and  massacring  its  inhabit- 
ants. He  had  even  the  heart  to  commence,  and  to  con- 
tinue this  conspiracy  against  human  nature ;  the  ostensi- 
ble ci'ime  was  royalism,  but  the  secret  motive  is  said  to 
have  been  literary  vengeance  !  As  wretched  a  poet  and 
actor  as  a  man,  D'Herbois  had  been  hissed  off  the  thea- 
tre at  Lyons,  and  to  avenge  that  ignominy,  he  had 
meditated  over  this  vast  and  remorseless  crime.  Is  there 
but  one  Collot  D'  Herbois  in  the  universe  ? 

Long  since  this  was  written,  a  fact  has  been  recorded 
of  Chenier,  the  French  dramatic  poet,  which  parallels  the 
horrid  tale  of  Collot  D'Herbois,  which  some  have  been 
willing  %o  doubt  from  its  enormity.  It  is  said,  that  this 
monster,  in  the  revolutionary  period,  when  he  had  the 
power  to  save  the  life  of  his  brother  Andre,  while  his 
father,  prostrate  before  a  wretched  son,  was  imploring 
for  the  life  of  an  innocent  brother,  remained  silent ;  it  is 
further  said  that  he  appropriated  to  himself  a  tragedy 
which  he  found  among  his  brother's  manuscripts.  "  Fra- 
tricide from  literary  jealousy,"  observes  the  relator  of 
this  anecdote,  "was  a  crime  reserved  for  a  modern 
French  revolutionist."*  There  are  some  pathetic  stan- 
zas which  Andr6  was  composing  in  his  last  moments, 
when  awaiting  his  fate ;  the  most  pathetic  of  all  stanzas 
is  that  one  which  he  left  unfinished — • 

Pout-6tre,  avant  que  I'henro  en  cerclo  promen6o 

Ait  pose,  sur  I'eraail  brillant, 
Dari3  les  soixanto  pas  oh.  sa  route  est  bornee, 

Son  pied  sonoro  et  vigilant, 
Lo  sommeil  du  tombeau  pressera  ma  paupi^re— 

*  Edinburgh  Review,  xxx.  159. 


DOMESTIC  LIFE.  231 

At  this  unfiuished  stauza  was  the  pensive  poet  sum- 
moned to  the  sruillotine ! 


CHAPTER    XYL 

The  domestic  life  of  genius. — Defects  of  great  compositions  attributed 
to  domestic  infelicities. — The  home  of  the  literary  character  should 
be  the  abode  of  repose  and  silence. — Of  the  Father. — Of  the  Mother. 
— Of  family  genius. — Men  of  genius  not  more  respected  than  other 
men  in  their  domestic  circle. — The  cultivators  of  science  and  art  do 
not  meet  on  equal  terms  with  others,  in  domestic  life. — Their  neg- 
lect of  those  around  them. — Often  accused  of  imaginary  crimes. 

WHEN  the  temper  and  the  leisure  of  the  literary  char- 
acter are  alike  broken,  even  his  best  works,  the  too 
faithful  mirrors  of  his  state  of  mind,  will  participate  in 
its  inequalities ;  and  surely  the  incubations  of  genius,  in 
its  dehcate  and  shadowy  combinations,  are  not  less  sensi- 
ble in  their  operation  than  the  composition  of  sonorous 
bodies,  where,  while  the  warm  metal  is  settling  in  the 
mould,  even  an  unusual  vibration  of  the  air  during  the 
moment  of  fusion  will  injure  the  tone. 

Some  of  the  conspicuous  blemishes  of  several  great 
compositions  may  be  attributed  to  the  domestic  infeli- 
cities of  their  authors.  The  desultory  life  of  Camoens 
is  imagined  to  be  perceptible  in  the  deficient  connexion 
of  his  epic ;  and  Milton's  blindness  and  divided  family 
prevented  that  castigating  criticism,  which  otherwise 
had  erased  passages  which  have  escaped  from  his  revis- 
ing hand.  He  felt  himself  in  the  situation  of  his  Samson 
Agonistes,  whom  he  so  pathetically  describes — 

His  foes'  derision,  captive,  poor,  and  blind. 

Even  Locke  complains  of  his  "  discontinued  way  of 
writing,"  and  "  writing  by  incoherent  parcels,"  from  the 


232  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

avocations  of  a  busy  and  unsettled  life,  which  undoubt- 
edly produced  a  deficiency  of  method  in  the  disposition 
of  the  materials  of  his  great  work.  The  careless  rapid 
lines  of  Dry  den  are  justly  attributed  to  his  distress,  and 
indeed  he  pleads  for  his  inequalities  from  his  domestic 
circumstances.  Johnson  often  silently,  but  eagerly, 
corrected  the  "Ramblers"  in  their  successive  editions, 
of  which  so  many  had  been  despatched  in  haste.  The 
learned  Greaves  offered  some  excuses  for  his  errors  in  his 
edition  of  "  Abulfeda,"  from  "  his  being  five  years  en- 
cumbered with  lawsuits,  and  diverted  from  his  studies." 
When  at  length  he  returned  to  them,  he  expresses  his 
surprise  "  at  the  pains  he  had  formerly  undergone,"  but 
of  which  he  now  felt  himself  unwilling,  he  knew  not  how, 
of  again  undergoing."  Goldoni,  when  at  the  bar,  aban- 
doned his  comic  talent  for  several  years;  and  having 
resvimed  it,  his  first  comedy  totally  failed :  "  My  head," 
says  he,  "was  occupied  with  my  professional  employ- 
ment ;  I  was  uneasy  in  mind  and  in  bad  humour."  A  law- 
suit, a  bankruptcy,  a  domestic  feud,  or  an  indulgence  in 
criminal  or  in  foolish  pursuits,  have  chilled  the  fervour 
of  imagination,  scattered  mto  fragments  many  a  noble 
design,  and  paralysed  the  finest  genius.  The  distrac- 
tions of  Guide's  studies  from  his  passion  for  gaming,  and 
of  Parmegiano's  for  alchemy,  have  been  traced  in  their 
works,  which  are  often  hurried  over  and  unequal.  It  is 
curious  to  observe,  that  Cumberland  attributes  the  excel- 
lence of  his  comedy.  The  West  Indian^  to  the  peculiarly 
hapjiy  situation  in  which  he  found  himself  at  the  time  of 
its  composition,  free  from  the  incessant  avocations  which 
had  crossed  him  in  the  writing  of  The  Brothers.  "  I  was 
master  of  my  time,  my  mind  was  free,  and  I  was  happy 
in  the  society  of  the  dearest  friends  I  had  on  earth.  The 
calls  of  oflice,  the  cavillings  of  angry  rivals,  and  the 
gibings  of  newspaper  critics,  could  not  reach  me  on  the 
banks  of  the  Shannon,  where  all  Avithin-doors  was  love 


DOMESTIC  INFELICITY.  233 

and  affection.  In  no  other  period  of  my  life  have  the 
same  haj^py  circumstances  combined  to  cheer  me  in  any 
of  my  literary  laboiirs." 

The  best  years  of  Mengs'  life  were  embittered  by  his 
father,  a  poor  artist,  and  who,  with  poorer  feelings,  con- 
verted his  home  into  a  prison-house,  forced  his  son  into 
the  slavery  of  stipulated  task- work,  while  bread  and 
water  were  the  only  fruits  of  the  fine  arts.  In  this 
■  domestic  persecution,  the  son  contracted  those  morose 
and  saturnine  habits  which  in  after-life  marked  the  char- 
acter of  the  ungenial  Mengs.  Alonso  Cano,  a  celebrated 
Spanish  painter,  would  have  carried  his  art  to  perfection, 
had  not  the  unceasing  persecution  of  the  Inquisitors 
entirely  deprived  him  of  that  tranquillity  so  necessary  to 
the  very  existence  of  art.  Ovid,  in  exile  on  the  barren 
shores  of  Tomos,  deserted  by  his  genius,  in  his  copious 
Tristia  loses  much  of  the  luxuriance  of  his  fancy. 

We  have  a  remarkable  evidence  of  domestic  unhappi- 
ness  annihilating  the  very  faculty  of  genius  itself,  in  the 
case  of  Dr.  Brook  Taylor,  the  celebrated  author  of  the 
"Linear  Perspective."  This  great  mathematician  in 
early  life  distinguished  himself  as  an  inventor  in  science, 
and  the  most  sanguine  hopes  of  his  future  discoveries 
were  raised  both  at  home  and  abroad.  Two  unexpected 
events  in  domestic  life  extinguished  his  inventive  facul- 
ties. After  the  loss  of  two  wives,  whom  he  regarded 
with  no  common  affection,  he  became  unfitted  for  pro- 
found studies ;  he  carried  his  own  personal  despair  into 
his  favourite  objects  of  pursuit,  and  abandoned  them. 
The  inventor  of  the  most  original  work  suffered  the  last 
fifteen  years  of  his  life  to  drop  away,  without  hope,  and 
without  exertion ;  nor  is  this  a  solitary  instance,  whei*e 
a  man  of  genius,  deprived  of  the  idolised  partner  of  his 
existence,  has  no  longer  been  able  to  find  an  object  in  his 
studies,  and  where  even  fame  itself  has  ceased  to  in- 
terest.    Tlie  reason  which  Rousseau  alleges  for  the  cyni- 


234  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

cal  spleen  which  so  frequently  breathes  forth  in  his 
works,  shows  how  the  domestic  character  of  the  man  of 
genius  leaves  itself  in  his  productions.  After  describing 
the  infelicity  of  his  domestic  affau-s,  occasioned  by  the 
mother  of  Theresa,  and  Theresa  herself,  both  women  of 
the  lowest  class  and  the  worst  dispositions,  he  adds,  on 
this  wretched  marriage,  "These  unexpected,  disagree- 
able events,  in  a  state  of  my  own  choice,  plunged  me 
into  literature,  to  give  a  new  direction  and  diversion  to- 
my  mind;  and  in  all  my  first  works  I  scattered  that 
bilious  humour  which  had  occasioned  this  very  occujja- 
tion."  Our  author's  character  in  his  works  was  "the 
very  opposite  to  the  one  in  which  he  appeared  to  these 
low  people.  Feeling  his  degradation  among  them,  for 
they  treated  his  simplicity  as  utter  silliness,  his  personal 
timidity  assumed  a  tone  of  boldness  and  originality  in 
his  writings,  while  a  strong  personal  sense  of  shame 
heightened  his  causticity,  and  he  delighted  to  contemn 
that  urbanity  in  which  he  had  never  shared,  and  which 
he  knew  not  how  to  practise.  His  miserable  subser- 
vience to  these  people  was  the  real  cause  of  his  oppressed 
6j)irit  calling  out  for  some  undefined  freedom  in  society ; 
and  thus  the  real  Rousseau,  with  all  his  disordered  feel- 
ings, only  appeared  in  his  writings.  The  secrets  of  his 
heart  were  confided  to  his  pen. 

"The  painting-room  must  be  like  Eden  before  the 
Fall ;  no  joyless  turbulent  passions  must  enter  there  " — 
exclaims  the  enthusiast  Ilichardson.  The  home  of  the 
literary  character  should  be  the  abode  of  i*epose  and  of 
silence.  Thei'c  must  he  look  for  the  feasts  of  study,  in 
progressive  and  alternate  labours ;  a  taste  "  which,"  says 
Gibbon,  "I  would  not  exchange  for  the  treasures  of 
India."  Rousseau  liad  always  a  Avork  going  on,  for 
rainy  days  and  spare  hours,  such  as  his  "  Dictionary  of 
Music :"  a  variety  of  works  never  tired ;  it  was  the 
sinfjle  one  which    exhausted.      Metastasio  looks  with 


LOYE  OF  LITERARY  LABOUR.  035 

delight  on  his  variety,  which  resembled  the  fruits  in  the 
garden  of  Armida — 

E  mentre  spunta  I'un,  I'altro  mature. 

"Wliile  one  matures,  the  other  buds  and  blows. 

Nor  is  it  always  fame,  or  any  lower  motive,  which 
may  induce  the  literary  character  to  hold  an  unwearied 
pen.  Another  equally  powerful  exists,  which  must  re- 
main inexplicable  to  him  who  knows  not  to  escape  from 
the  listlessness  of  life — it  is  the  passion  for  literary  occu- 
pation. He  whose  eye  can  only  measure  the  space  occu- 
pied by  the  voluminous  labours  of  the  elder  Pliny,  of  a 
Mazzuchelli,  a  Muratori,  a  Montfaucon,  and  a  Gough,  all 
men  who  laboured  from  the  love  of  labour,  and  can  see 
nothing  in  that  space  but  the  industry  which  filled  it,  is 
like  him  who  only  views  a  city  at  a  distance — the  streets 
and  the  edifices,  and  all  the  life  and  jjojiulation  within, 
he  can  never  know.  These  literary  characters  projected 
their  works  as  so  many  schemes  to  escape  from  unin- 
teresting pursuits;  and,  in  these  folios,  how  many  evils 
of  life  did  they  bury,  while  their  happiness  expanded 
with  their  volume !  Aulus  Gellius  desired  to  live  no 
longer  than  he  was  able  to  retain  the  faculty  of  writing 
and  observing.  Tlie  literary  character  must  grow  as 
impassioned  with  his  subject  as  >:Elian  with  his  "History 
of  Animals ;"  "  wealth  and  honour  I  might  have  obtained 
at  the  courts  of  princes ;  but  I  preferred  the  delight  of 
multiplying  my  knowledge.  I  am  aware  that  the  avari- 
cious and  the  ambitious  will  accuse  me  of  folly ;  but  I 
have  always  found  most  pleasure  in  observing  the  nature 
of  animals,  studying  their  character,  and  writing  their 
history." 

Even  with  those  who  have  acquired  their  celebrity,  the 
love  of  literary  labour  is  not  diminished — a  circumstance 
recorded  by  the  younger  Pliny  of  Livy.  In  a  preface  to 
one  of  his  lost  books,  that  historian  had  said  that  he  had 


236  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

obtained  Kvifficiont  glory  by  his  former  writings  on  the 
Roman  history,  and  might  now  repose  in  silence ;  but  his 
mind  was  isO  restless  and  so  abhorrent  of  indolence,  that 
it  only  felt  its  existence  in  literary  exertion.  In  a  simi- 
lar situatiovj  the  feeling  was  fully  experienced  by  Hume. 
Our  philosopher  completed  his  history  neither  for  money 
nor  for  fame,  having  then  more  than  a  sufficiency  of  both ; 
but  chiefly  to  indulge  a  habit  as  a  resource  against  indo- 
lence.* These  are  the  minds  which  are  without  hope  if 
they  are  without  occupation. 

Amidst  the  repose  and  silence  of  study,  delightful  to 
the  literary  character,  are  the  soothing  interruptions  of 
the  voices  of  those  whom  he  loves,  recalling  him  from  his 
abstractions  into  social  existence.  These  re-animate  his 
languor,  and  moments  of  inspiration  are  caught  in  the 
emotions  of  affection,  when  a  father  or  a  friend,  a  wife,  a 
daughter,  or  a  sister,  become  the  participators  of  his  o-«ti 
tastes,  the  companions  of  his  studies,  and  identify  their 
happiness  with  his  fame.  A  beautiful  incident  in  the  do- 
mestic life  of  literature  is  one  which  Morellet  has  revealed 
of  Marmontel.  In  presenting  his  collected  works  to  his 
wife,  she  discovered  that  the  author  had  dedicated  his 
volumes  to  herself;  but  the  dedication  was  not  made  pain- 
ful to  her  modesty,  for  it  was  not  a  public  one.  Nor  was  it 
so  concise  as  to  be  mistaken  for  a  compliment.    The  theme 

*  This  appears  in  oiio  of  liis  interesting  letters  first  published  in  the 
Literary  Gazette,  Oct.  20,  1821. — [It  is  addressed  to  Adam  Smith,  dated 
Julj'  28,  1759,  and  he  says,  "I  signed  an  agreement  with  Mr.  Millar, 
where  I  mention  that  I  proposed  to  write  tlie  History  of  England  from 
the  beginning  till  the  accession  of  Henry  VII.;  and  lie  engages  to  give 
mo  1  lOOZ.  for  tlio  copy.  This  is  tho  first  previous  agreement  ever  I 
made  with  a  bookseller.  I  shall  execute  tlie  work  at  leisure,  without 
fatiguing  myself  by  such  ardent  application  as  I  -have  hitherto  em- 
ployed. It  is  chiefly  as  a  resource  against  idleness  that  I  shall  under 
take  the  work,  for  as  to  money  I  have  enough ;  and  as  to  reputation 
what  1  have  wroLo  already  will  be  sufficient,  if  it  be  good;  if  not,  it  is 
not  likely  I  shall  now  write  bettor."] 


FAMILY  APFECTION.  fs37 

was  copious,  for  tlie  heart  overflowed  in  the  pages  o  n^e- 
crated  to  her  domestic  vii'tues ;  and  Marmontel  left  it  m'  a 
record,  that  their  children  might  learn  the  gratitude  of 
their  father,  and  know  the  character  of  their  mother,  whcu 
the  writer  should  be  no  more.  Many  readers  were  perhaj^ 
surprised  to  find  in  Xesker's  Comte  rendu  au  Moi,  a  politt 
cal  and  financial  work,  a  great  and  lovely  character  c. 
domestic  excellence  in  his  ^^dfe.  Tliis  was  more  obtru 
sive  than  Marmontel's  private  dedication ;  yet  it  was  ncx 
the  less  sincere.  K  Necker  failed  in  the  cautious  reservt 
of  private  feelings,  who  will  censure  ?  Nothing  seems 
misplaced  which  the  heart  dictates. 

If  Horace  were  dear  to  his  friends,  he  declares  they 
owed  him  to  his  father  : — 

purus  et  insona 
(Ut  me  collaudem)  si  vivo  et  carus  amicis, 
Causa  fuit  Pater  his. 

If  pure  and  innocent,  if  dear  (forgive 
Tliese  little  praises)  to  my  friends  I  live, 
My  father  was  the  cause. 

This  intelligent  father,  an  obscure  tax-gatherer,  discovered 
the  propensity  of  Horace's  mind;  for  he  removed  the  boy 
of  genius  from  a  rural  seclusion  to  the  metropolis,  anx- 
iously attending  on  him  to  his  various  masters.  Grotius, 
like  Horace,  celebrated  m  verse  his  gratitude  to  his  ex- 
cellent father,  who  li.ad  formed  him  not  only  to  be  a  man 
of  learning,  but  a  great  character.  Vitruvius  pours  forth 
a  grateful  prayer  to  the  memory  of  his  parents,  who 
had  instilled  into  his  soul  a  love  for  literary  and  philo- 
sophical subjects ;  and  it  is  an  amiable  trait  in  Plutarch 
to  have  introduced  his  father  in  the  Symposiacs,  as  an 
elegant  critic  and  moralist,  and  his  brother  Lamprias, 
whose  sweetness  of  disposition,  inclining  to  cheerful  rail- 
lery, the  Sage  of  Cherontea  has  immortalised.  The  father 
of  Gibbon  urged  him  to   literary  distinction,  and  the 


23S  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

dedication  of  the  "Essay  on  Literature"  to  that  father, 
connected  with  his  subsequent  labour,  shows  the  force 
of  the  excitement.  The  father  of  Pope  lived  long  enough 
to  witness  his  son's  celebrity. 

Tears  such  as  tender  fathers  shed, 

Warm  from  my  eyes  descend, 
For  joy,  to  think  when  I  am  dead, 

My  son  shall  have  mankind  his  Friend.* 

The  son  of  Buffon  one  day  sui'prised  his  father  by  the 
sight  of  a  column,  which  he  had  raised  to  the  memory  of 
his  father's  eloquent  genius.  "  It  will  do  you  honour," 
observed  the  Gallic  sage.f  And  when  that  son  in  the 
revolution  was  led  to  the  guillotine,  he  ascended  in 
silence,  so  impressed  with  his  father's  fame,  that  he  only 
told  the  people,  "  I  am  the  son  of  Buffon !" 

Fathers  absorbed  in  their  occupations  can  but  rarely 
attract  their  off'spring.  The  first  durable  impressions  of 
our  moral  existence  come  from  the  mother.  The  first 
prudential  wisdom  to  which  Genius  listens  falls  fi'om  her 
lips,  and  only  her  caresses  can  create  the  moments  of  ten- 
derness. The  earnest  discernment  of  a  mother's  love  sur- 
vives in  the  imagination  of  manhood.  The  mother  of 
Sir  William  Jones,  having  formed  a  plan  for  the  educa- 
tion of  her  son,  withdrew  from  great  connexions  that  she 
might  live  only  for  that  son.  Her  great  principle  of  edu- 
cation, was  to  excite  by  curiosity ;  the  result  could  not  fail 
to  be  knowledge.  "  Read,  and  you  will  know,"  she  con- 
stantly replied  to  her  filial  pupil.  And  we  have  his  own 
acknowledgment,  that  to  tins  maxim,  which  produced 
the  habit  of  study,  he  was  indebted  for  his  future  attain- 
ments. ,  Kant,  the  German  metaphysician,  was  always 

*  These  linos  have  been  happily  applied  by  Mr.  Bowles  to  the  father 
of  Pope. — The  poet's  domestic  affections  wore  as  permanent  as  they 
were  strong.  * 

f  It  still  exists  in  the  gardens  of  the  old  chatean  at  Montbard.  It 
is  a  pillar  of  marble  bearing  this  inscription : — "  Excelsa)  tiirris  humilia 
columna,  Parent!  suo  fiUus  Buffon.     1785." — Ed. 


FAMILY  AFFECTION.  239 

fond  of  declaring  that  he  OAved  to  the  ascendancy  of  his 
mother's  character  the  severe  inflexibility  of  his  moral 
principles.  The  mother  of  Burns  kindled  his  genius  by 
reciting  the  old  Scottish  ballads,  while  to  his  father  he 
attributed  his  less  pleasing  cast  of  character.  Bishop 
Watson  traced  to  the  aflectionate  influence  of  his  mother, 
the  religious  feelings  which  he  confesses  he  inherited 
from  her.  The  mother  of  Edgeworth,  confined  through 
life  to  her  apartment,  was  the  only  person  who  studied 
his  constitutional  volatility.  When  he  hastened  to  her 
death-bed,  the  last  imperfect  accents  of  that  beloved 
voice  reminded  him  of  the  past  and  warned  him  of  the 
future,  and  he  declares  that  voice  "  had  a  happy  influ- 
ence on  his  habits," — as  happy,  at  least,  as  his  own  vola- 
tile nature  would  allow.  "  To  the  manner  in  which  my 
mother  formed  me  at  an  early  age,"  said  Napoleon,  "  I 
principally  owe  my  subsequent  elevation.  My  opinion 
is,  that  the  future  good  or  bad  conduct  of  a  child  en- 
tirely depends  upon  the  mother." 

There  is  this  remarkable  in  the  strong  aflfections  of  the 
mother  in  the  formation  of  the  literary  character,  that, 
without  even  partaking  of,  or  sympathising  with  the 
pleasures  the  child  is  fond  of,  the  mother  will  often  cher- 
ish those  first  decided  tastes  merely  from  the  delight  of 
promoting  the  happiness  of  her  son ;  so  that  that  genius, 
which  some  would  produce  on  a  preconceived  system,  or 
implant  by  stratagem,  or  enforce  by  application,  with  her 
may  be  only  the  watchful  labour  of  love.*  One  of  our 
most  eminent  antiquaries  has  often  assured  me  that  his 
great  passion,  and  I  may  say  his  genius,  for  his  curious 

*  Kotzebue  has  noted  the  delicate  attention  of  his  mother  in  not  only 
fostering  his  genius,  but  in  watching  its  too  rapid  development.  He 
says: — "If  at  any  time  my  imagination  was  overheated,  my  mother 
always  contrived  to  select  something  for  my  evening  reading  which 
might  moderate  this  ardour,  and  make  a  gentler  impression  on  my  too 
irritable  fancy." — Ed. 


240  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

knowledge  and  liis  vast  researches,  be  attributes  to  ma- 
ternal affection.  When  his  early  taste  for  these  studies 
was  thwarted  by  the  very  different  one  of  his  father,  the 
mother  silently  sujiplied  her  son  with  the  sort  of  treas- 
ures he  languished  for,  blessing  the  knowledge,  which 
indeed  she  could  not  share  with  him,  but  which  she 
beheld  imjiarting  happiness  to  her  youthful  aiitiquary. 

There  is,  what  may  be  called,  fa^hly  genius.  In  the 
home  of  a  man  of  genius  is  diffused  an  electrical  atmos- 
phere, and  his  own  pre-eminence  strikes  out  talents  in 
all.  "  The  active  pursuits  of  my  father,"  says  the  daugh- 
ter of  Edgeworth,  "  spread  an  animation  through  the 
house  by  connecting  children  with  all  that  was  going  on, 
and  allowing  them  to  join  in  thought  and  conversation ; 
sympathy  and  emulation  excited  mental  exertion  in  the 
most  agreeable  manner."  Evelyn,  in  his  beautiful  retreat 
at  Saye's  Court,  had  inspired  his  family  with  that  variety 
of  taste  which  he  himself  was  spreading  throughout  the 
nation.  His  son  translated  Rapin's  "  Gardens,"  which 
poem  the  father  proudly  preserved  in  his  "Sylva;"  his 
lady,  ever  busied  in  his  study,  excelled  in  the  arts  her . 
husband  loved,  and  designed  the  frontispiece  to  his 
"Lucretius:"  she  was  the  cultivator  of  their  celebrated 
garden,  which  served  as  "an  example"  of  his  great 
work  on  "forest  trees."  Cowley,  who  has  commemo- 
rated Evelyn's  love  of  books  and  gardens,  has  delight- 
fully applied  them  to  his  lady,  in  whom,  says  the  bard, 
Evelyn  meets  both  pleasures : — 

The  fairest  garden  in  her  looks, 
And  in  her  mind  the  wisest  books, 

Tlic  house  of  Ilaller  resembled  a  temple  consecrated  to 
science  and  the  arts,  and  the  votaries  were  his  own 
family.  The  universal  acquirements  of  ITaller  were 
possessed  in  some  degree  by  every  one  under  his  roof; 
vand  their  studious  delight  in  transcribing  manuscripts, 


FAMILY  AFFECTION.  241 

in  consulting  authors,  in  botanising,  drawing  and  colour- 
ing the  plants  under  his  eye,  formed  occupations  which 
made  the  daughters  happy  and  the  sons  eminent.*  The 
painter  Stella  inspired  his  family  to  copy  his  fanciful  in- 
ventions, and  the  playful  graver  of  Claudine  Stella,  his 
niece,  animated  his  "  Sports  of  Children."  I  have  seen 
a  print  of  Coypel  in  his  studio,  and  by  his  side  his  little 
daughter,  who  is  intensely  watching  the  progress  of  her 
father's  pencil.  The  artist  has  represented  himself  in 
the  act  of  suspending  his  labour  to  look  on  his  child. 
At  that  moment,  his  thoughts  were  divided  between 
two  objects  of  his  love.  The  character  and  the  works 
of  the  late  Elizabeth  Hamilton  were  formed  entirely  by 
her  brother.  Admiring  the  man  she  loved,  she  imitated 
what  she  admired ;  and  while  the  brother  was  arduously 
completing  the  version  of  the  Persian  Hedaya,  the  sister, 
who  had  associated  with  his  morning  tasks  and  his  even- 
ing conversations,  was  recalling  all  the  ideas,  and  pour- 
traying  her  fraternal  master  in  her  "  Hindoo  Rajah." 

Nor  are  there  wanting  instances  where  this  family 
GENIUS  has  been  carried  down  through  successive  gen- 
erations :  the  volume  of  the  father  has  been  continued 
by  a  son,  or  a  relative.  The  history  of  the  family  of  the 
Z\vingers  is  a  combination  of  studies  and  inherited 
tastes.  Theodore  published,  in  1697,  a  folio  herbal,  of 
which  his  son  Fi'ederic  gave  an  enlarged  edition  in  1 744 ; 
and  the  family  was  honoured  by  their  name  having  been 
given  to  a  genus  of  plants  dedicated  to  their  memory, 
and  known  in  botany  by  the  name  of  the  Zioitigera.  In 
history  and  in  literature,  the  family  name  was  equally 

*  Haller's  death  (a.  d.  1777)  was  as  remarkable  for  its  calm  philoso- 
phy, as  his  life  for  its  happiness.  He  was  a  professional  surgeon,  and 
continued  to  the  last  an  attentive  and  rational  observer  of  the  symp- 
toms of  the  disease  which  was  bringing  him  to  the  grave.  He  trans- 
mitted to  the  University  of  Gottingen  a  scientific  analysis  of  his  case : 
and  died  feeling  his  own  pulse. — Ed. 
]6 


24-2  LITERARY   CHARACTER, 

eminent;  the  same  Theodore  continued  a  great  work, 
"  The  Theatre  of  Human  Life,"  which  had  been  begun 
by  his  father-in-law,  and  which  for  the  third  time  Avas 
enlarged  by  another  son.  Among  the  historians  of  Italy, 
it  is  delightful  to  contemplate  this  family  genius  trans- 
mitting itself  with  unsullied  probity  among  the  three 
Villanis,  and  the  Malaspinis,  and  the  two  Portas.  The 
history  of  the  learned  family  of  the  Stephens  presents  a 
dynasty  of  literature ;  and  to  distinguish  the  numerous 
members,  they  have  been  designated  as  Henry  I.  and 
Henry  II., — as  Robert  I.,  the  II.,  and  the  HI.*  Our 
coiintry  may  exult  in  having  possessed  many  literary 
families — the  Wartons,  the  father  and  two  sons :  the 
Burneys,  more  in  number ;  and  the  nephews  of  Milton, 
whose  humble  torch  at  least  was  lighted  at  the  altar  of 
the  great  bard.f 

No  event  in  literary  history  is  more  impressive  than 
the  fate  of  Quintilian ;  it  was  in  the  midst  of  his  elaborate 
work,  which  was  composed  to  form  the  literary  character 
of  a  son,  that  he  experienced  the  most  terrible  affliction 
in  the  domestic  life  of  genius — the  successive  deaths 
of  his  wife  and  his  only  child.  It  was  a  moral  earth- 
quake with  a  single  survivor  amidst  the  ruins.  An  awful 
burst  of  parental  and  literary  affliction  breaks  forth  in 
Quintilian's  lamentation, — "  My  wealth,  and  my  writings 
the  fruits  of  a  long  and  painful  life,  must  now  be  re- 
served only  for  strangers ;  all  I  possess  is  for  aliens,  and 
no  longer  mine !"  AVe  feel  the  united  agony  of  the  hus- 
band, the  father,  and  the  man  of  genius  ! 

Deprived  of  these  social  consolations,  we  see  Johnson 
call  about  him  those  whose  calamities  exiled  them  from 
society,  and  his  roof  lodges  the  blind,  the  lame  and  the 

*  For  an  account  of  them  and  their  works,  see  "  Curiositiea  of  Liter* 
ature,"  vol.  1.,  p.  76, 
f  The  PhiUips. 


PUBLIC   AND   PRIVATE   LIFE.  £43 

poor  for  the  heart  must  possess  something  it  can  call  its 
own,  to  be  kind  to. 

In  domestic  life,  the  Ahbe  De  St.  Pierre  enlarged  its 
moral  vocabulary,  by  fixing  in  his  language  two  signifi- 
cant words.  One  served  to  explain  the  virtue  most 
familiar  to  him  hienfaisanee ;  and  that  in-itable  vanity 
which  magnifies  its  ephemeral  fame,  the  sage  reduced 
to  a  mortifying  diminutive — la  gloriole  ! 

It  has  often  excited  surjirise  that  men  of  genius  are 
not  more  reverenced  than  other  men  in  their  domestic 
circle.  The  disparity  between  the  public  and  the  pri- 
vate esteem  of  the  same  man  is  often  striking.  In 
privacy  we  discover  that  the  comic  genius  is  not  always 
cheerful,  that  the  sage  is  sometimes  ridiculous,  and  the 
poet  seldom  delightful.  The  golden  hour  of  invention 
must  terminate  like  other  hours,  and  when  the  man  of 
genius  returns  to  the  cares,  the  duties,  the  vexations, 
and  the  amusements  of  life,  his  companions  behold  him  as 
one  of  themselves — the  creature  of  habits  and  infirmities. 

In  the  business  of  life,  the  cultivators  of  science  and 
the  arts,  with  all  their  simplicity  of  feeling,  and  gener- 
ous openness  about  them,  do  not  meet  on  equal  terms 
with  other  men.  Their  freqiaent  abstractions  calling  off 
the  mind  to  whatever  enters  into  its  lonely  pursuits, 
render  them  greatly  inferior  to  others  in  practical  and 
immediate  observation.  Studious  men  have  been  re- 
proached as  being  so  deficient  in  the  knowledge  of  the 
human  character,  that  they  are  usually  disqualified  for 
the  management  of  public  business.  Their  confidence 
in  their  friends  has  no  bound,  while  they  become  the 
easy  dupes  of  the  designing.  A  friend,  who  was  in 
ofiice  with  the  late  Mr.  Cumberland,  assures  me  that  he 
was  so  intractable  to  the  forms  of  business,  and  so  easily 
induced  to  do  more  or  to  do  less  than  he  ought,  that 
he  was  compelled  to  perform  the  official  business  of  this 
literary  man,  to  free  himself  from  his  annoyance ;  and 


244  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

yet  Cumberland  could  not  be  reproached  with  any 
deficiency  in  a  knowledge  of  the  human  character, 
which  he  was  always  touching  with  caustic  pleasantry. 

Addison  and  Prior  were  unskilful  statesman;  and 
Malesherbes  confessed,  a  few  days  before  his  death,  that 
Turgot  and  himself,  men  of  genius  and  philosophers, 
from  whom  the  nation  had  expected  much,  had  badly- 
administered  the  aifairs  of  the  state ;  for  "  knowing  men 
but  by  books,  and  unskilful  in  business,  we  could  not 
form  the  king  to  the  government."  A  man  of  genius 
may  know  the  whole  map  of  the  world  of  human  nature ; 
but,  like  the  great  geographer,  may  be  apt  to  be  lost  in 
the  wood  which  any  one  in  the  neighbourhood  knows 
better  than  him. 

"  The  conversation  of  a  poet,"  says  Goldsmith,  "  is  that 
of  a  man  of  sense,  while  his  actions  are  those  of  a  fool." 
Genius,  careless  of  the  future,  and  often  absent  in  the 
present,  avoids  too  deep  a  commingling  in  the  minor 
cares  of  life.  Hence  it  becomes  a  victim  to  common 
fools  and  vulgar  villains.  "  I  love  my  family's  welfare, 
but  I  cannot  be  so  foolish  as  to  make  myself  the  slave 
to  the  minute  affairs  of  a  house,"  said  Montesquieu. 
The  story  told  of  a  man  of  learning  is  probably  true, 
however  ridiculous  it  may  appear.  DeejDly  occupied  in 
his  library,  one,  rushing  in,  informed  him  that  the  house 
was  on  fire :  "  Go  to  my  wife — these  matters  belong  to 
her !"  pettishly  replied  the  interrupted  student.  Bacon 
sat  at  one  end  of  his  table  wrapt  in  many  a  reverie, 
while  at  the  other  the  creatures  about  him  were  traflfick- 
ing  with  his  honour,  and  ruijiing  his  good  name :  "  I 
am  better  fitted  for  this,"  said  that  great  man  once, 
holding  out  a  book,  "  than  for  the  life  I  have  of  late  led. 
Nature  has  not  fitted  me  for  that ;  knowing  myself  by 
inward  calling  to  be  fitter  to  hold  a  book  than  to  play 
a  part." 

Buffon,  who  consumed  his  mornings  in  his  old  tower  of 


DOMESTIC   LIFE.  245 

Montbard,  at  the  end  of  his  garden,*  with  all  nature  open- 
ing to  him,  formed  all  his  ideas  of  what  was  passing  before 
him  from  the  arts  of  a  pliant  Capuchin,  and  the  com- 
ments of  a  perruquier  on  the  scandalous  chronicle  of  the 
village.  These  humble  confidants  he  treated  as  chil- 
dren, but  the  children  were  commanding  the  great  man ! 
Young,  whose  satires  give  the  very  anatomy  of  human 
foibles,  was  wholly  governed  by  his  housekeeper.  She 
thought  and  acted  for  him,  which  probably  greatly  as- 
sisted the  "  Night  Thoughts,"  but  his  curate  exposed  the 
domestic  economy  of  a  man  of  genius  by  a  satirical  novel. 
If  I  am  truly  informed,  in  that  gallery  of  satirical  portraits 
in  his  "  Love  of  Fame,"  Young  has  omitted  one  of  the 
most  striking — his  owx !  While  the  poet's  eye  was 
glancing  from  "  earth  to  heaven,"  he  totally  overlooked 
the  lady  whom  he  married,  and  who  soon  became  the 
object  of  his  contempt ;  and  not  only  his  wife,  but  his 
only  son,  who  when  he  returned  home  for  the  vacation 
from  Winchester  school,  was  only  admitted  into  the 
pi'esence  of  his  poetical  father  on  the  first  and  the  last 
day ;  and  whose  unhappy  life  is  attributed  to  this  un- 
natural neglect  :f — a  lamentable  domestic  catastrophe, 
which,  I  fear,  has  too  frequently  occurred  amidst  the 
ardour  and  occupations  of  literary  glory.  Much,  too 
much,  of  the  tender  domesticity  of  life  is  violated  by 
literary  characters.  All  that  lives  under  their  eye,  all 
that  should  be  guided  by  their  hand,  the  recluse  and 
abstracted  men  of  genius  must  leave  to  their  own  direc- 
tion. But  let  it  not  be  forgotten,  that,  if  such  neglect 
others,  they  also  neglect  themselves,  and  are  deprived 

*  For  some  account  of  this  place,  see  the  chapter  on  "  Literary  Resi- 
dences" in  vol.  iii.,  p.  395,  of  "Curiosities  of  Literature." 

f  These  facts  are  drawn  from  a  manuscript  of  the  late  Sir  Herbert 
Croft,  who  regretted  that  Dr.  Johnson  would  not  suffer  bim  to  give 
this  account  during  the  doctor's  lifetime,  in  his  Life  of  Young,  but 
which  it  had  always  been  his  intention  to  have  added  to  it. 


246  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

of  those  family  enjoyments  for  which  few  men  have 
warmer  sympathies.  While  the  literary  character  burns 
with  the  ambition  of  raising  a  great  literary  name,  he 
is  too  often  forbidden  to  taste  of  this  domestic  inter- 
course, or  to  indulge  the  versatile  curiosity  of  his  pri- 
vate amusements — for  he  is  chained  to  his  great  labour. 
Robertson  felt  this  while  employed  on  his  histories,  and 
he  at  length  rejoiced  when,  after  many  years  of  devoted 
toil,  he  returned  to  the  luxury  of  reading  for  his  own 
amusement  and  to  the  conversation  of  his  friends.  "  Such 
a  sacrifice,"  observes  his  philosophical  biographer,  "  must 
be  more  or  less  made  by  all  who  devote  themselves  to 
letters,  whether  with  a  view  to  emolument  or  to  fame ; 
nor  would  it  perhaps  be  easy  to  make  it,  were  it  not  for 
the  jirospect  (seldom,  alas  !  realised)  of  earning  by  their 
exertions  that  learned  and  honourable  leisure  which  he 
was  so  fortunate  as  to  attain." 

But  men  of  genius  have  often  been  accused  of  imaginary 
crimes.  Their  very  eminence  attracts  the  lie  of  calumny, 
which  tradition  often  conveys  beyond  the  possibility  of 
refutation.  Sometimes  they  are  reproached  as  Avanting 
in  aifection,  when  they  disjDlease  then*  fathers  by  making 
an  obscure  name  celebrated.  The  family  of  Descartes 
lamented,  as  a  blot  in  their  escutcheon,  that  Descartes, 
who  was  born  a  gentleman,  should  become  a  philosopher ; 
and  this  elevated  genius  was  refused  the  satisfaction  of 
embracing  an  unforgiving  parent,  while  his  dwarfish  bro- 
ther, with  a  mind  diminutive  as  his  person,  ridiculed  his 
philosophic  relative,  and  turned  to  advantage  his  philo- 
sophic disposition.  The  daughter  of  Addison  was  edu- 
cated with  a  perfect  contempt  of  authors,  and  blushed  to 
bear  a  name  more  illustrious  than  that  of  all  the  War- 
wicks,  on  her  alliance  to  which  noble  family  she  prided 
herself  The  children  of  Milton,  far  from  solacing  the 
age  of  their  blind  parent,  became  impatient  for  his  death, 
embittered  his  last  hours  with  scorn  and  disafiectiou,  and 


LITERARY  POVERTY.  247 

combined  to  cheat  and  rob  him.  Milton,  having  enriched 
our  national  jjoetry  by  two  immortal  epics,  with  patient 
grief  blessed  the  single  female,  who  did  not  entirely  aban- 
don him,  and  the  obscure  fanatic  who  was  pleased  with 
his  poems  because  they  were  religious.  What  felicities  ! 
Avhat  laurels !  And  now  we  have  recently  learned,  that 
the  daughter  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  lived  on  ill  terms 
with  her  mother,  of  whose  enchanting  genius  she  appears 
to  have  been  insensible  !  The  unquestionable  documents 
are  two  letters  hitherto  cautiously  secreted.  The  daugh- 
ter was  in  the  house  of  her  mother,  when  an  extraordinary 
letter  was  addressed  to  her  from  the  chamber  of  Madame 
de  Sevigne  after  a  sleepless  night.  In  this  she  describes, 
with  her  peculiar  felicity,  the  ill-treatment  she  received 
from  the  daughter  she  idolised ;  it  is  a  kindling  effusion 
of  maternal  reproach,  and  tenderness,  and  genius.* 

Some  have  been  deemed  disagi'eeable  companions,  be- 
cause they  felt  the  weariness  of  dulness,  or  the  imperti- 
nence of  intrusion ;  desci'ibed  as  bad  husbands,  when 
united  to  women  who,  without  a  kindred  feeling,  had  the 
mean  art  to  prey  upon  their  infirmities ;  or  as  bad  fathers, 
because  their  ofispring  have  not  always  reflected  the 
moral  beauty  of  their  own  page.  But  the  magnet  loses 
nothing  of  its  vii'tue,  even  when  the  particles  about  it, 
incapable  themselves  of  being  attracted,  are  not  acted 
on  by  its  occult  property. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


The  poverty  of  Literary  men. — Poverty,  a  relative  quality. — Of  the 
poverty  of  literary  men  in  what  degree  desirable. — Extreme  poverty. 
— Task-work. — Of  gratuitious  works. — A  project  to  provide  against  the 
•worst  state  of  poverty  among  literary  men. 

OVERTY  is  a  state  not  so  fatal  to  genius,  as  it  is 
usually  conceived  to  be.  We  shall  find  that  it  has 
*  Lettres  inedites  de  Madame  de  Sevigne,  pp.  201  and  203. 


P 


248  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

been  sometimes  voluntarily  cliosen ;  and  that  to  connect 
too  closely  great  fortune  with  great  genius,  creates  one 
of  those  powerful  but  unhappy  alliances,- where  the  one 
party  must  necessarily  act  contrary  to  the  interests  of 
the  other. 

Poverty  is  a  relative  quality,  like  cold  and  heat,  which 
are  but  the  increase  or  the  diminution  in  our  own  sensa- 
tions. The  positive  idea  must  arise  from  comparison. 
There  is  a  state  of  poverty  reserved  even  for  the  wealthy 
man,  the  instant  that  he  comes  in  hateful  contact  with 
the  enormous  capitalist.  But  there  is  a  poverty  neither 
vulgar  nor  terrifying,  asking  no  favours,  and  on  no  tei'ms 
receiving  any ;  a  poverty  which  annihilates  its  ideal  evils ; 
and,  becoming  even  a  source  of  pride,  will  confer  inde- 
pendence, that  first  step  to  genius. 

Among  the  continental  nations,  to  accumulate  wealth, 
in  the  spirit  of  a  capitalist  does  not  seem  to  form  the 
prime  object  of  domestic  life.  The  traffic  of  money  is 
with  them  left  to  the  traffickers,  their  merchants,  and 
their  financiers.  In  our  country  the  commercial  character 
has  so  closely  interwoven  and  identified  itself  with  the 
national  one,  and  its  peculiar  views  have  so  terminated 
all  our  pursuits,  that  every  rank  is  alike  influenced  by  its 
spirit,  and  things  are  valued  by  a  market-price  which  natu- 
rally admits  of  no  such  appraisement.  In  a  country  where 
"  The  Wealth  of  Nations "  has  been  fixed  as  tlie  first 
principle  of  political  existence,  wealth  has  raised  an  aris- 
tocracy more  noble  than  nobility,  more  celebrated  than 
genius,  more  popular  than  patriotism ;  but  however  it 
may  partake  at  times  of  a  generous  nature,  it  liardly  looks 
beyond  its  own  narrow  pale.  It  is  curious  to  notice  that 
Montesquieu,  who  was  in  England,  observed,  that  "  If  I 
had  been  born  here,  nothing  could  have  consoled  me  in 
failing  to  accumulate  a  large  fortune ;  but  I  do  not  lament 
the  mediocrity  of  my  circumstances  in  France."  The 
sources  of  our  national  wealth  have  greatly  multiplied, 


LITERARY  POVERTY.  9J,9 

and  the  evil  has  consequently  increased,  since  the  visit 
of  the  great  philosopher. 

The  cai'es  of  property,  the  daily  concerns  of  a  family, 
tlie  pressure  of  such  minute  disturbers  of  their  studies, 
have  induced  some  great  minds  to  regret  the  abolition 
of  those  monastic  orders,  beneath  whose  undisturbed 
shade  were  produced  the  mighty  labours  of  a  Moutfaucon, 
a  Calmet,  a  Florez,  and  the  still  unfinished  volumes  of 
the  Benedictines.  Often  has  the  literary  character, 
amidst  the  busied  delights  of  study,  sighed  "to  bid  a 
farewell  sweet "  to  the  turbulence  of  society.  It  was  not 
discontent,  nor  any  undervaluing  of  general  society,  but 
the  pure  enthusiasm  of  the  library,  which  once  induced 
tlie  studious  Evelyn  to  sketch  a  retreat  of  this  nature, 
which  he  addressed  to  his  friend,  the  illustrious  Boyle. 
He  proposed  To  form  ^  A  colleg^'where  persons  of  the 
same  turn  of  mind  might  enjoy  the  pleasure  of  agreeable 
society,  and  at  the  same  time  pass  their  days  without 
care  or  interruption."*  This  abandonment  of  their  life 
to  their  genius  has,  indeed,  often  cost  them  too  dear,  from 
the  days  of  Sophocles,  who,  ardent  in  his  old  age,  ne- 
glected his  family  affairs,  and  was  brought  before  his 
judges  by  his  relations,  as  one  fallen  into  a  second  child- 
hood. The  aged  poet  brought  but  one  solitary  witness 
in  his  favour — an  unfinished  tragedy;  which  having 
read,  the  judges  rose  before  him,  and  retorted  the  charge 
on  his  accusers. 

A  parallel  circumstance  occurred  to  the  Abbe  Cotin, 
the  victim  of  a  rhyme  of  the  satirical  Boileau.    Studious, 

*  This  romantic  literary  retreat  is  one  of  those  delightful  reveries 
which  the  elegant  taste  of  Evelyn  abounded  with.  It  may  be  found 
at  full  length  in  the  fifth  volume  of  Boyle's  Works,  not  in  the  second, 
as  the  Biog.  Brit.  says.  His  lady  was  to  live  among  the  society.  "  If 
I  and  my  wife  take  up  two  apartments,  for  we  are  to  be  decently  asun- 
der, however  I  stipulate,  and  her  inclination  will  greatly  suit  with  il^ 
that  shall  be  no  impediment  to  the  society,  but  a  considerable  adv^iu- 
tage  to  the  economic  part,"  &c. 


250  LITERARY   CnARAClER. 

and  without  fortune,  Cotin  had  lived  contented  till  he 
incurred  the  unhappiness  of  inheriting  a  large  estate. 
Then  a  world  of  cares  opened  on  him  ;  his  rents  Avere  not 
paid,  and  his  creditors  increased.  Dragged  from  his 
Hebrew  and  Greek,  poor  Cotin  resolved  to  make  over  his 
entii'e  fortune  to  one  of  his  heirs,  on  condition  of  mainte- 
nance. His  other  relations  assuming  that  a  man  who 
parted  with  his  estate  in  his  lifetime  must  necessarily  be 
deranged,  brought  the  learned  Cotin  into  court.  Cotin 
had  nothing  to  say  in  his  own  favour,  bitt  requested  his 
judges  would  allow  him  to  address  them  from  the  ser- 
mons which  he  preached.  The  good  sense,  the  sound 
reasoning,  and  the  erudition  of  the  preacher  were  such, 
that  the  whole  bench  unanimously  declared  that  they 
themselves  might  be  considered  as  madmen,  were  they 
to  condemn  a  man  of  letters  who  was  desirous  of  escaping 
from  the  incumbrance  of  a  fortune  which  had  only  inter- 
rupted his  studies. 

There  may  then  be  sufficient  motives  to  induce  such  a 
man  to  make  a  state  of  mediocrity  his  choice.  If  he  lose 
his  happiness,  he  mutilates  his  genius.  Goldoni,  with  all 
the  simplicity  of  his  feelings  and  habits,  in  reviewing  his 
life,  tells  us  how  he  was  always  relapsing  into  his  old 
propensity  of  comic  writing;  "but  the  thought  of  this 
does  not  disturb  me,"  says  he ;  "  for  though  in  any  other 
situation  I  might  have  been  in  easier  circumstances,  I 
should  never  have  been  so  hapj^y."  Bayle  is  a  parent 
of  the  modern  literary  character ;  he  pursued  the  same 
course,  and  early  in  life  adopted  the  i3rincij)lc,  "  Neither 
to  fear  bad  fortune  nor  have  any  ardent  desires  for  good." 
Acquainted  Avitli  the  passions  only  as  their  historian,  and 
living  only  for  literature,  he  sacrificed  to  it  the  two  great 
acquisitions  of  human  j^ursuits — fortune  and  a  family: 
but  in  what  country  liad  Bayle  not  a  fxmily  and  a  pos- 
session in  his  fame  ?  Huine  and  Gibbon  had  the  most 
perfect  conception  of  the   literary  character,  and  they 


TITERART  POVERTT.  251 

were  aware  of  this  important  principle  in  its  habits — • 
"  My  own  revenue,"  said  Hume,  "  will  be  sufficient  for  a 
man  of  letters,  who  surely  needs  less  money,  both  for  his 
entertainment  and  credit,  than  other  people."  Gibbon 
observed  of  himself- — "  Perhaps  the  golden  mediocrity 
of  my  fortune  has  contribiited  to  fortify  my  application." 
The  state  of  poverty,  then,  desirable  in  the  domestic 
life  of  genius,  is  one  in  which  the  cares  of  property 
never  intrude,  and  the  want  of  wealth  is  never  perceived. 
This  is  not  indigence ;  that  state  which,  however  digni- 
fied the  man  of  genius  himself  may  be,  must  inevitably 
degrade !  for  the  heartless  will  gibe,  and  even  the  com- 
passionate turn  aside  -with  contempt.  This  literary  out- 
cast will  soon  be  forsaken  even  by  himself!  his  own 
intellect  will  be  clouded  over,  and  his  limbs  shrink  in  the 
palsy  of  bodily  misery  and  shame — 

Malesuada  Fames,  et  turpis  Egestas 
Terribiles  visu  formse. 

Not  that  in  this  history  of  men  of  genius  we  are  with- 
out illustrious  examples  of  those  who  have  even  learnt 
to  xoant^  that  they  might  emancipate  their  genius  fi'om 
their  necessities  ! 

We  see  Rousseau  rushing  out  of  the  palace  of  the 
financier,  selling  his  watch,  copying  music  by  the  sheet, 
and  by  the  mechanical  industry  of  two  hours,  purchasing 
ten  for  genius.  We  may  smile  at  the  enthusiasm  of 
young  Bai-ry,  who  finding  himself  too  constant  a  haunter 
of  taverns,  imagined  that  this  expenditure  of  time  was 
occasioned  by  having  money ;  and  to  put  an  end  to  the 
conflict,  he  threw  the  little  he  possessed  at  once  into  the 
Liffey ;  but  let  us  not  forget  that  Barry,  in  the  maturity 
of  life,  confidently  began  a  labour  of  years,*  and  one  of 
the  noblest  inventions  in  his  art — a  great  poem  in  a  pic- 

*  His  series  of  pictures  for  the  walls  of  the  meeting-room  of  tha 
Society  of  Arts  iu  the  Adelphi. — Ed. 


252  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

ture — mth  no  other  resource  than  what  he  found  by 
secret  labours  through  the  night,  in  furnishing  the  shops 
with  those  slight  and  saleable  sketches  which  secured 
uninterrupted  mornings  for  his  genius.  Spinosa,  a  name 
as  celebrated,  and  perhaps  as  calumniated,  as  Epicurus, 
lived  in  all  sorts  of  abstinence,  even  of  honours,  of  pen- 
sions, and  of  presents;  which,  however  disguised  by 
kindness,  he  would  not  accept,  so  fearful  was  this  philoso- 
pher of  a  chain  !  Lodging  in  a  cottage  and  obtaining  a 
livelihood  by  polishing  optical  glasses,  he  declared  that 
he  had  never  spent  more  than  he  earned,  and  certainly 
thought  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  snperfliious  earn- 
ings. At  his  death  his  small  accounts  showed  how  he 
had  subsisted  on  a  few  pence  a-day,  and 

Enjoy'd,  spare  feast  1  a  radish  and  an  egg. 

Poussin  persisted  in  refusing  a  higher  price  than  that 
affixed  to  the  back  of  his  pictures,  at  the  time  he  was 
living  without  a  domestic.  The  great  oriental  scholar, 
Anquetil  de  Perron,  is  a  recent  example  of  the  literary 
character  carrying  his  indifference  to  privations  to  the 
very  cynicism  of  poverty  ;  and  he  seems  to  exult  over  his 
destitution  with  the  same  pride  as  others  would  expatiate 
over  their  possessions.  Yet  we  must  not  forget,  to  use 
the  words  of  Lord  Bacon,  that  "judging  that  means  were 
to  be  spent  upon  learning,  and  not  learning  to  be  applied 
to  means,"  De  Perron  refused  the  offer  of  thirty  thousand 
livres  for  his  copy  of  the  "  Zend-avesta."  Writing 
to  some  Bramins,  he  describes  his  life  at  Paris  to  be 
much  like  their  own.  "  I  subsist  on  the  produce  of  my 
literary  labours  without  revenue,  establisliment,  or  place. 
I  have  no  wife  nor  children ;  alone,  absolutely  free,  but 
always  the  friend  of  men  of  probity.  In  a  perpetual 
war  with  my  senses,  I  triumph  over  the  attractions  of 
the  Avorld  or  I  contemn  them." 

This  ascetic  existence  is  not  singular.     Parini,  a  great 


LITERARY   POVERTY.  253 

modern  poet  of  Italy,  whom  the  Milanese  point  out  to 
strangers  as  the  glory  of  their  city,  lived  in  the  same 
state  of  unrepining  poverty.  Mr.  Hobhouse  has  given 
us  this  self-portrait  of  the  poet : — 

Me,  non  nato  a  percotera 
Le  dure  illustri  porte, 
Nudo  accorra,  ma  libero 
n  regno  della  morte. 

Naked,  but  free!  A  life  of  hard  deprivations  was 
long  that  of  the  illustrious  Linnseus.  Without  fortune, 
to  that  great  mind  it  never  seemed  necessary  to  acquire 
any.  Peregrinating  on  foot  with  a  stylus,  a  magnifying- 
glass,  and  a  basket  for  plants,  he  shared  the  rustic  meal 
of  the  peasant.  Never  was  glory  obtained  at  a  cheaper 
rate !  exclaims  one  of  his  eulogists.  Satisfied  with  the 
least  of  the  little,  he  only  felt  one  perpetual  want — that 
of  completing  his  Flors.  Not  that  Linnaeus  was  insensi- 
ble to  his  situation,  for  he  gave  his  name  to  a  little  flower 
in  Lapland — the  Linncea  JBorealis,  from  the  fanciful 
analogy  he  discovered  between  its  character  and  his  own 
early  fate,  "  a  little  northern  plant  flowering  early,  de- 
pressed, abject,  and  long  overlooked."  The  want  of 
fortune,  however,  did  not  deprive  this  man  of  genius  of 
his  true  glory,  nor  of  that  statue  raised  to  him  in  the 
gardens  of  the  University  of  Upsal,  nor  of  that  solemn 
eulogy  delivered  by  a  crowned  head,  nor  of  those  medals 
which  his  nation  struck  to  commemorate  the  genius  of 
the  three  kingdoms  of  nature  ! 

This,  then,  is  the  race  who  have  often  smiled  at  the 
light  regard  of  their  good  neighbours  when  contrasted 
with  their  own  celebrity  ;  for  in  poverty  and  in  solitude 
such  men  are  not  separated  from  their  fame ;  that  is  ever 
proceeding,  ever  raising  a  secret,  but  constant,  triumph 
in  their  minds.* 

*  Spagnoletto,  while  sign-painting  at  Rome,  attracted  by  his  ability 
the  notice  of  a  cardinal,  who  ultimately  gave  him  a  home  in  his 


254  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Yes !  Genius,  imclegraded  and  uuexhaustud,  may  in- 
deed even  in  a  garret  glow  in  its  career :  but  it  must  be 
on  the  principle  which  induced  Rousseau  solemnly  to  re- 
nounce writing  "^:)rtr  metier.''^  This  in  the  Jburnal  de 
Scavans  he  once  attempted,  but  found  himself  quite 
inadequate  to  "  the  profession."  *  In  a  garret,  the  author 
of  the  "  Studies  of  Nature,"  as  he  exultingly  tells  us, 
arranged  his  work.  "  It  was  in  a  little  garret,  in  the 
new  street  of  St.  Etienne  du  Mont,  where  I  resided  four 
years,  in  the  midst  of  physical  and  domestic  afflictions. 
But  there  I  enjoyed  the  most  exquisite  pleasures  of  my 
life,  amid  profound  solitude  and  an  enchanting  horizon. 
There  I  put  the  finishing  liand  to  my  '  Studies  of 
Nature,'  and  there  I  published  them."  Pope,  one  day 
taking  his  usual  walk  with  Harte  in  the  Haymarket, 
desired  him  to  enter  a  little  shop,  where  going  up  three 
pair  of  stairs  into  a  small  room.  Pope  said,  "  In  this 
garret  Addison  wrote  his  '  Campaign  !' "  To  the  feel- 
ings of  the  poet  this  garret  had  become  a  consecrated 
spot ;  Genius  seemed  more  itself,  placed  in  contrast  with 
its  miserable  locality  ! 

The  man  of  genius  wrestling  with  oppressive  fortune, 
who  follows  the  avocations  of  an  author  as  a  precarious 
source  of  existence,  should  take  as  the  model  of  the 
authorial  life,  that  of  Dr.  Johnson.  The  dignity  of  the 
literary  character  was  as  deeply  associated  with  his  feel- 
ings, and  the  "reverence  t]iyself"as  present  to  his  mind, 
when  doomed  to  be  one  of  the  Helots  of  literature,  by 
Osborn,  Cave,  and  JVliller,  as  when,  in  the  honest  triumph 
of  Genius,  he  repelled  a  tardy  adukation  of  the  lordly 
Chesterfield.     Destitute  of  this  ennobling  principle,  the 

palace;  but  tho  artist,  feeling  that  his  poverty  was  necessary  to  his 
industry  and  independence,  fled  to  Naples,  and  recommenced  a  life  of 
labour. — Ed. 

*  Twice  he  repeated  this  resolution.  See  his  Works,  vol.  xxxi.,  p 
283  ;  vol.  ixxii.,  p.  90. 


INFLUENCE    OF   NECESSITY.  255 

autlior  sinks  into  the  tribe  of  those  rabid  aclventnrers  of 
the  pen  who  have  masked  the  degraded  form  of  the 
literary  cliaractcr  under  the  assumed  title  of  "  authors  by 
profession"* — the  Guthries,  the  Ralphs,  and  the  Am- 
hursts.f  There  are  worse  evils  for  the  literary  ma»," 
says  a  living  author,  who  himself  is  the  true  model  of  the 
great  literary  character,  "than  neglect,  poverty,  im- 
prisonment, and  death.  There  are  even  more  pitiable 
objects  than  Chatterton  himself  •^'ith  the  poison  at  his 
lips."  "  I  should  die  with  hunger  were  I  at  peace  with 
the  world !"  exclaimed  a  corsair  of  literature — and 
dashed  his  pen  into  the  black  flood  before  him  of  soot 
and  gall. 

In  substituting  fortune  for  the  object  of  his  designs, 
the  man  of  genius  deprives  himself  of  those  heats  of  in- 
S2>iration  reserved  for  him  who  lives  for  himself;  the 
mollia  tempora  fandi  of  Art.  K  he  be  subservient  to 
the  public  taste,  without  daring  to  raise  it  to  his  own, 
the  creature  of  his  times  has  not  the  choice  of  his  sub- 
jects, which  choice  is  itself  a  sort  of  invention,  A  task- 
worker  ceases  to  think  his  own  thoughts.  The  stipulated 
price  and  time  are  weighing  on  his  pen  or  his  pencil, 
while  the  hour-glass  is  dropping  its  hasty  sands.  If  the 
man  of  genius  would  be  wealthy  and  even  luxurious, 
another  fever  besides  the  thirst  of  glory  torments  him. 
Such  insatiable  desires  create  many  fears,  and  a  mind  in 
fear  is  a  mind  in  slavery.  In  one  of  Shakspeare's  son- 
nets he  pathetically  laments  this  compulsion  of  his  neces- 
sities which  forced  him  to  the  trade  of  pleasing  the 
public;  and  he  illustrates  this  degradation  by  a  novel 
image.     "  Chide  Fortune,"  cries  the  bard, — 

•  Prom  an  original  letter  which  I  have  published  from  Guthrie  to  a 
minister  of  state,  this  modern  phrase  appears  to  have  been  his  own 
invention.  The  principle  unblushingly  avowed,  required  the  sanction 
of  a  respectable  designation.  I  have  preserved  it  in  "  Calamities  of 
Authors." 

f  For  some  account  of  these  men,  see  "  Calamities  of  Authors." 


256  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

The  guilty  goddess  of  my  harmless  deeds, 

That  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide 

Than  public  means  which  public  manners  breeds ; 

Thence  comes  it  that  my  name  receives  a  brand; 

And  almost  thence,  my  nature  is  subdued 

To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dter's  hand. 

Such  is  the  fate  of  that  author,  who,  in  his  variety  of 
task-works,  bhie,  yellow,  and  red,  lives  without  ever 
having  shown  his  own  natural  complexion.  We  hear 
the  eloquent  truth  from  one  who  has  alike  shared  in  the 
bliss  of  composition,  and  the  misery  of  its  "  daily  bread." 
"A  single  hour  of  composition  won  from  the  business  of 
the  day,  is  worth  more  than  the  whole  day's  toil  of  him 
who  works  at  the  trade  of  literature :  in  the  one  case,  the 
spirit  comes  joyfully  to  refresh  itself,  like  a  hart  to  the 
waterbrooks  ;  in  the  other,  it  pursues  its  miserable  way, 
panting  and  jaded,  with  the  dogs  of  hvmger  and  necessity 
behind,"*  We  trace  the  fate  of  all  task-work  in  the  his- 
tory of  Poussin,  when  called  on  to  reside  at  the  French 
court.  Labouring  without  intermission,  sometimes  on 
one  thing  and  sometimes  on  another,  and  hurried  on  in 
things  which  required  both  time  and  thought,  he  saw  too 
clearly  the  fatal  tendency  of  such  a  life,  and  exclaimed, 
with  ill-suppressed  bitterness,  "  If  I  stay  long  in  this 
country,  I  shall  turn  dauber  like  the  rest  here."  The 
great  artist  abruj^tly  returned  to  Rome  to  regain  the 
possession  of  his  own  thoughts. 

It  has  been  a  question  with  some,  more  indeed  abroad 
than  at  home,  whether  the  art  of  instructing  mankind  by 
the  press  would  not  be  less  suspicious  in  its  character, 
were  it  less  interested  in  one  of  its  prevalent  motives  ? 
Some  noble  self-denials  of  this  kind  are  recorded.  The 
principle  of  emolument  will  produce  the  industry  which 
furnislies  works  for  popular  demand ;  but  it  is  only  the 
principle  of  honour  which  can  produce  the  lasting  works 

*  Qua/rterhj  Review,  vol.  viii.,  p.  638. 


BOOKSELLERS'    PATRONAGE.  257 

of  genius.  Boileau  seems  to  censure  Racine  for  having 
accepted  money  for  one  of  his  dramas,  while  he,  who  was 
not  rich,  gave  away  liis  polished  poems  to  the  public. 
He  seems  desirous  of  raising  the  art  of  writing  to  a  more 
disinterested  profession  than  any  other,  requiring  no 
fees  for  the  professors.  Olivet  presented  his  elaborate 
edition  of  Cicero  to  the  world,  requiring  no  other  remu- 
neration than  its  glory.  Milton  did  not  compose  his  im- 
mortal work  for  his  trivial  coj^yright  ;*  and  Linnceus  sold 
his  labours  for  a  single  ducat.  The  Abbe  Mably,  the 
author  of  many  political  and  moral  works,  lived  on  little, 
and  would  accept  only  a  few  presentation  copies  from  the 
booksellers.  But,  since  we  have  become  a  nation  of 
book-collectors,  and  since  there  exists,  as  Mr.  Coleridge 
describes  it,  "  a  reading  public,"  this  principle  of  honour 
is  altered.  Wealthy  and  even  noble  authors  are  proud 
to  receive  the  largest  tribute  to  their  genius,  because 
this  tribute  is  the  certain  evidence  of  the  number  who 
pay  it.  The  property  of  a  book,  therefore,  represents  to 
the  literary  candidate  the  collective  force  of  the  thousands 
of  voters  on  whose  favour  his  claims  can  only  exist. 
This  change  in  the  affairs  of  the  literary  republic  in  our 
country  was  felt  by  Gibbon,  who  has  fixed  on  "  the  pa- 
tronage of  booksellers  "  as  the  standard  of  public  opinion : 
"the  measure  of  their  liberality,"  he  says,  "is  the  least 
ambiguous  test  of  our  common  success."  The  philoso- 
pher accepted  it  as  a  substitute  for  that  "  friendship  or 
favour  of  princes,  of  which  he  could  not  boast."  The 
same  opinion  was  held  by  Johnson.  Yet,  looking  on 
the  present  state  of  English  literature,  the  most  profuse 

*  The  agreement  made  witli  Simmons,  the  publisher,  was  51.  down, 
and  51.  more  when  1500  copies  were  sold,  the  same  sum  to  be  paid  for 
the  second  and  third  editions,  each  of  the  same  number  of  copies. 
Milton  only  lived  during  the  publication  of  two  editions,  and  his  widow 
parted  with  all  her  right  in  the  work  to  the  same  bookseller  for  eight 
pounds.  Her  autograph  receipt  was  in  the  possession  of  the  late  Daw- 
son Turner. — Ed. 
17 


258  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

pei-liaj)S  in  Europe,  we  cannot  refrain  from  thinking  that 
the  "patronage  of  booksellers  "  is  frequently  injurious  to 
the  great  interests  of  literature. 

The  dealers  in  enonnous  speculative  purchases  are 
only  subservient  to  the  spirit  of  the  times.  If  they  are 
the  purveyors,  they  are  also  the  panders  of  public  taste ; 
and  their  vaunted  patronage  only  extends  to  popular 
subjects  ;  while  their  urgent  demands  are  sure  to  produce 
hasty  manufactures.  A  precious  work  on  a  recondite 
subject,  which  may  have  consumed  the  life  of  its  author, 
no  bookseller  can  patronise ;  and  whenever  such  a  work 
is  published,  the  author  has  rarely  survived  the  long 
season  of  the  public's  neglect.  While  popular  works, 
after  some  few  years  of  celebrity,  have  at  length  been 
discovered  not  worth  the  repairs  nor  the  renewal  of  their 
lease  of  fame,  the  neglected  work  of  a  nobler  design  rises 
in  value  and  rarity.  The  literary  work  which  requires 
the  greatest  skill  and  difficulty,  and  the  longest  labour, 
is  not  commercially  valued  with  that  hasty,  spurious 
novelty,  for  which  the  taste  of  the  2)ublic  is  craving,  from 
the  strength  of  its  disease  rather  than  of  its  appetite. 
Rousseau  observed,  that  his  musical  opera,  the  work  of 
five  or  six  weeks,  brought  him  as  much  money  as  he  had 
received  for  his  "  Emile,"  which  had  cost  him  twenty 
years  of  meditation,  and  three  years  of  composition. 
Tills  single  fact  represents  a  hundred.  So  fallacious  are 
public  opinion  and  the  patronage  of  booksellers  ! 

Such,  then,  is  the  inadequate  remuneration  of  a  life 
devoted  to  literature ;  and  notwithstanding  the  more 
general  interest  excited  by  its  productions  within  the 
last  century,  it  has  not  essentially  altered  their  situation 
in  society;  for  who  is  deceived  by  the  trivial  exultation 
of  the  gay  sparkling  scribbler  who  lately  assured  us  that 
authors  now  dip  their  pens  in  silver  ink-standishes,  and 
have  a  valet  for  an  amanuensis?  Fashionable  writers 
must  necessarily  get  out  of  fashion ;  it  is  the  inevitable  fate 


BOOKSELLERS'   PATRONAGE.  259 

of  the  material  and  tlic  manufacturer.  An  eleemosynary 
fund  can  provide  no  permanent  relief  for  the  age  and  soi'- 
rows  of  the  unhappy  men  of  science  and  literature;  and 
an  author  may  even  have  composed  a  work  which  shall  be 
read  by  the  next  generation  as  well  as  the  present,  and 
still  be  left  in  a  state  even  of  pauperism.  These  victims 
perish  in  silence !  Xo  one  has  attempted  to  suggest  even 
a  palliative  for  this  great  evil;  and  when  I  asked  the 
greatest  genius  of  our  age  to  projiose  some  relief  for  this 
general  suffering,  a  sad  and  convulsive  nod,  a  shrug  tliat 
sympathised  with  the  misery  of  so  many  brothers,  and 
an  avowal  that  even  he  could  not  invent  one,  was  all  that 
genius  had  to  alleviate  the  forlorn  state  of  the  literary 
character.* 

The  only  man  of  genius  who  has  thrown  out  a  hint  for 
improving  the  situation  of  the  literary  man  is  Adam 
Smith.  In  that  passage  in  his  "  "Wealth  of  Nations  "  to 
which  I  have  already  referred,  he  says,  that  "  Before  the 
invention  of  the  art  of  printing,  the  only  employment  by 
which  a  man  of  letters  could  make  anything  by  his  tal- 
ents was  that  o^  a  puhlic  or  a  private  teacher,  or  by  com- 
municating to  other  people  the  various  and  useful  knowl- 
edge which  he  had  acquired  himself;  and  this  surely  is  a 
more  honourable,  a  more  useful,  and  in  general  even  a 
more  profitable  employment  than  that  other  of  icriUng 
for  a  bookseller,  to  which  the  art  of  printing  has  given 
occasion."  We  see  the  political  economist,  alike  insensi- 
ble to  the  dignity  of  the  literary  character,  incapable  of 
taking  a  just  view  of  its  glorious  avocation.  To  obviate 
the  personal  wants  attached  to  the  occupations  of  an 
author,  he  would,  more  effectually  than  skilfully,  get  rid 
of  authorship  itself  This  is  not  to  restore  the  limb,  but 
to  amputate  it.     It  is  not  the  preservation  of  existence, 

*  It  -^vas  the  late  Sir  "Walter  Scott — if  T  could  assign  the  date  of  this 
conversation,  it  would  throw  some  light  on  what  might  be  then  pass- 
ing in  his  own  mind. 


260  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

but  its  annihilation.  Ilis  friends  Hume  and  Robertson 
must  have  turned  from  this  page  humiliated  and  indig- 
nant. They  could  have  supplied  Adam  Smith  with  a 
truer  conception  of  the  literary  character,  of  its  inde- 
pendence, its  influence,  and  its  glory. 

I  have  projected  a  plan  for  the  alleviation  of  the  state 
of  these  authors  who  are  not  blessed  with  a  patrimony. 
The  trade  connected  with  literature  is  carried  on  by  men 
who  are  usually  not  literate,  and  the  generality  of  the 
publishers  of  books,  imlike  all  other  tradesmen,  are  often 
the  worst  judges  of  their  own  wares.  Were  it  jiractica- 
ble,  as  I  believe  it  to  be,  that  authors  and  men  of  letters 
could  themselves  be  booksellers,  the  public  would  derive 
this  immediate  benefit  from  the  scheme ;  a  deluge  of 
worthless  or  indifferent  books  would  be  turned  away, 
and  the  name  of  the  literary  publisher  would  be  a  pledge 
for  the  value  of  every  new  book.  Every  literary  man 
would  choose  his  own  favourite  department,  and  we 
should  learn  from  him  as  well  as  from  his  books. 

Against  this  project  it  may  be  iirged,  that  literary  men 
are  ill  adapted  to  attend  to  the  regular  details  of  trade, 
and  that  the  great  capitalists  in  the  book  business  have 
not  been  men  of  literature.  But  this  plan  is  not  sug- 
gested for  accumulating  a  great  fortune,  or  for  the  pur- 
pose of  raising  up  a  new  class  of  tradesmen.  It  is  not 
designed  to  make  authors  wealthy,  for  that  would  inev- 
itably extinguish  great  literary  exertion,  but  only  to 
make  them  independent,  as  the  best  means  to  preserve 
exertion.  The  details  of  trade  are  not  even  to  reach 
him.  The  poet  Gesner,  a  bookseller,  left  his  lihrairie  to 
the  care  of  his  admirable  wife.  ITis  own  works,  the  ele- 
gant editions  which  issued  from  his  press,  and  the  value 
of  manuscripts,  were  the  objects  of  his  attention. 

On  the  Continent  many  of  the  dealers  in  books  have 
been  literary  men.  At  the  memorable  expulsion  of  the 
French  Protestants  on  the  edict  of  Nantes,  their  expatria- 


LITERARY  BOOKSELLERS.  261 

ted  literary  men  flew  to  the  shores  of  England,  and  the 
free  provinces  of  Holland ;  and  it  was  in  Holland  that 
this  colonj  of  litterateurs  established  magnificent  printing- 
houses,  and  furnished  Europe  "wnth  editions  of  the  native 
writers  of  France,  often  preferable  to  the  originals,  and 
even  wrote  the  best  works  of  that  time.  At  that  memo- 
rable period  in  our  own  history,  when  two  thousand  non- 
conformists were  ejected  on  St.  Bartholomew's  day  from 
the  national  establishment,  the  greater  part  wei-e  men  of 
learning,  who,  deprived  of  their  livings,  were  destitute 
of  any  means  of  existence.  These  scholars  were  com- 
pelled to  look  to  some  profitable  occupation,  and  for  the 
greater  part  they  fixed  on  trades  connected  with  litera- 
ture ;  some  became  eminent  booksellers,  and  continued 
to  be  voluminous  writers,  without  finding  their  studies 
interrupted  by  their  commercial  arrangements.  The  de- 
tails of  trade  must  be  left  to  others ;  the  hand  of  a  child 
can  turn  a  vast  machine,  and  the  object  here  proposed 
would  be  lost,  if  authors  sought  to  become  merely  book- 
sellers. 

Whenever  the  pxiblic  of  Europe  shall  witness  such  a 
new  order  of  men  among  their  booksellers,  they  will 
have  less  to  read,  but  more  to  remember.  Their  oj^in- 
ions  Avill  be  less  fluctuating,  and  their  knowledge  will 
come  to  them  -^dth  more  maturity.  Men  of  letters  Avill 
fly  to  the  house  of  the  bookseller  who  in  that  class  of 
literature  in  which  he  deals,  will  himself  be  not  the  least 
eminent  member. 


262  LITERART  CHARACTER. 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

The  matrimonial  stato  of  literature. — Matrimony  said  not  to  be  vfoU 
suited  to  the  domestic  hfe  of  genius. — Celibacy  a  concealed  cause  of 
the  early  querulousness  of  men  of  genius. — Of  unhappy  unions. — 
Not  absolutely  necessary  that  the  wife  should  be  a  literary  woman. — 
Of  the  docility  and  susceptibiUty  of  the  higher  female  cliaracter. — 
A  picture  of  a  literary  wife. 

MATRIMOISrY  lias  often  been  considered  as  a  condi- 
tion not  well  suited  to  the  domestic  life  of  genius, 
accomijanied  as  it  must  be  by  many  embarrassments  for 
the  head  and  the  heart.  It  was  an  axiom  with  Fuessli, 
the  Swiss  artist,  that  the  marriage  state  is  incomj^atible 
with  a  high  cultivation  of  the  fine  arts ;  and  such  appears 
to  have  been  the  feeling  of  most  artists.  When  Michael 
Angelo  was  asked  why  he  did  not  marry,  he  replied,  "  I 
have  espoused  my  art;  and  it  occasions  me  sufBcient 
domestic  cares,  for  my  works  shall  be  my  children. 
What  would  Bartholomeo  Ghiberti  have  been,  had  he 
not  made  the  gates  of  St.  John?  His  children  consumed 
his  fortune,  but  his  gates,  worthy  to  be  the  gates  of  Para- 
dise, remain."  The  three  Caraccis  refused  the  conjugal 
bond  on  the  same  principle,  dreading  the  interruptions 
of  domestic  life.  Their  crayons  and  paper  were  always 
on  their  dining-table.  Careless  of  fortune,  they  deter- 
mined never  to  hurry  over  their  works  in  order  that 
they  might  supply  the  ceaseless  demands  of  a  family. 
We  discover  the  same  principle  operating  in  our  own 
times.  When  a  young  painter,  who  had  just  married, 
told  Sir  Joshua  that  he  was  preparing  to  pursue  his 
studies  in  Italy,  that  great  painter  exclaimed,  "Married  ! 
then  you  are  ruined  as  an  artist !" 

The  same  principle  has  influenced  literary  men.  Sir 
Thomas  Bodlcy  had  a  smart  altercation  with  his  first 
librarian,  insisting  that  he  should  not  marry,  maintaining 


CELIBACY.  233 

its  absurdity  in  the  man  who  had  the  perpetual  care  of  a 
public  library ;  and  Woodward  left  as  one  of  the  express 
conditions  of  his  lecturer,  that  he  was  not  to  be  a  mar- 
ried man.  They  imagined  that  their  private  affairs  would 
interfere  with  their  public  duties.  Peiresc,  the  great 
French  collector,  refused  marriage,  convinced  that  the 
cares  of  a  family  were  too  absorbing  for  the  freedom 
necessary  to  literary  pursuits,  and  claimed  likewise  a 
sacrifice  of  fortune  incompatible  with  his  great  designs. 
Boyle,  who  would  not  sufler  his  studies  to  be  interrupted 
by  "  household  affairs,"  lived  as  a  boarder  with  his  sister. 
Lady  Ranelagh,  Xewton,  Locke,  Leibnitz,  Bayle,  and 
Hobbes,  and  Hume,  and  Gibbon,  and  Adam  Smith, 
decided  for  celibacy.  These  great  authors  placed  their 
happiness  in  their  celebrity. 

This  debate,  for  the  present  topic  has  sometimes 
warmed  into  one,  is  in  truth  ill  adapted  for  controversy. 
The  heart  is  more  concerned  in  its  issue  than  any  es- 
poused doctrine  terminating  in  partial  views.  Look  into 
the  domestic  annals  of  genius — observe  the  variety  of 
positions  into  which  the  literary  character  is  thrown  in  the 
nuptial  state.  Cynicism  will  not  always  obtain  a  sullen 
triumph,  nor  prudence  always  be  allowed  to  calculate 
away  some  of  the  richer  feelings  of  our  nature.  It  is  not 
an  axiom  that  literary  characters  must  necessarily  institute 
a  new  order  of  celibacy.  The  sentence  of  the  apostle 
pronounces  that  "  the  forbidding  to  marry  is  a  doctrine 
of  devils."  Wesley,  who  published,  "Thoughts  on  a 
Single  Life,"  advised  some  "to  remain  single  for  the 
kingdom  of  heaven's  sake ;  but  the  precept,"  he  adds,  "  is 
not  for  the  many."  So  indecisive  have  been  the  opinions 
of  the  most  curious  inquirers  concerning  the  matrunonial 
state,  whenever  a  great  destination  has  engaged  their 
consideration. 

One  position  we  may  assume,  that  the  studies,  and 
even  the  happiness  of  the  pursuits  of  men  of  genius,  are 


264  LTT.ERARY  CHARACTER. 

powerfully  influenced  by  the  domestic  associate  of  their 
lives. 

They  rarely  pass  through  the  age  of  love  without  its 
passion.  Even  their  DeUas  and  their  Amandas  are  often 
the  shadows  of  some  real  object ;  for  as  Shakspeare's  ex- 
perience told  him, 

Never  durst  poet  touch  a  pen  to  write, 
Until  his  ink  were  temper'd  with  love's  sighs. 

Their  imagination  is  perpetually  colouring  those  pictures 
of  domestic  happiness  on  which  they  delight  to  dwell. 
He  who  is  no  husband  sighs  for  that  tenderness  which  is 
at  once  bestowed  and  received ;  and  tears  will  start  in  the 
eyes  of  him  who,  in  becoming  a  child  among  children,  yet 
feels  that  he  is  no  father !  These  depi'ivations  have  usu- 
ally been  the  concealed  cause  of  the  querulous  melancholy 
of  the  literary  character. 

Such  was  the  real  occasion  of  Shenstone's  unhappiness. 
In  early  life  he  had  been  captivated  by  a  young  lady 
adapted  to  be  both  the  muse  and  the  wife  of  the  poet, 
and  their  miatual  sensibility  lasted  for  some  years.  It 
lasted  until  she  died.  It  was  in  parting  from  her  that  he 
first  sketched  his  "  Pastoral  Ballad."  Shenstone  had  the 
fortitude  to  refuse  marriage.  His  spirit  could  not  endure 
that  she  should  participate  in  that  life  of  self-privations 
to  which  he  was  doomed ;  but  his  heart  was  not  locked 
up  in  the  ice  of  celibacy,  and  his  plaintive  love  songs, 
and  elegies  flowed  from  no  fictitious  source.  "  It  is  long 
since,"  said  he,  "  I  have  considered  myself  as  undone. 
The  world  will  not  perliaps  consider  me  in  that  light  en- 
tirely till  I  have  married  my  maid."* 

Tliorason  met  a  reciprocal  passion  in  his  Amanda,  while 
the  full  tenderness  of  his  heart  was  ever  wasting  itself 
like  waters  in  a  desert.     As  Ave  have  been  made  little  ae- 

*  The  melancholy  talo  of  Shonstono's  life  is  narrated  in  the  third 
volume  of  "Curiosities  of  Literature." — E0. 


CELIBACY.  235 

quainted  with  this  part  of  the  history  of  the  poet  of  tlic 
"  Seasons,"  I  shall  givehis  own  description  of  those  deep 
feelings  from  a  manuscrij^t  letter  written  to  Mallet.  "  To 
turn  my  eyes  a  softer  way,  to  you  know  who — absence 
sighs  it  to  me.  What  is  my  heart  made  of  ?  a  soft  sys- 
tem of  low  nerves,  too  sensible  for  my  quiet — capable  of 
being  very  happy  or  very  unhappy,  I  am  afraid  the  last 
will  prevail.  Lay  your  hand  upon  a  kindred  heart,  and 
despise  me  not.  I  know  not  what  it  is,  but  she  dwells 
upon  my  thought  in  a  mingled  sentiment,  which  is  the 
sweetest,  the  most  intimately  pleasing  the  soul  can  re- 
ceive, and  which  I  would  Avish  never  to  want  towards 
some  dear  object  or  another.  To  have  always  some  se- 
cret darling  idea  to  which  one  can  still  have  recourse 
amidst  the  noise  and  nonsense  of  the  world,  and  which 
never  fails  to  touch  us  in  the  most  exquisite  manner,  is 
an  art  of  happiness  that  fortune  cannot  deprive  us  of. 
This  may  be  called  romantic ;  but  whatever  the  cause  is, 
the  effect  is  really  felt.  Pray,  when  you  write,  tell  me 
when  you  saw  her,  and  with  the  pure  eye  of  a  friend, 
when  you  see  her  again,  whisper  that  I  am  her  most 
humble  servant." 

Even  Pope  was  enamoured  of  a  "  scornful  lady ;"  and, 
as  Johnson  observed,  "  polluted  his  will  with  female  resent- 
ment." Johnson  himself,  we  are  told  by  one  who  knew 
him,  "  had  always  a  metaj)hysical  passion  for  one  princess 
or  other, — the  rustic  Lucy  Porter,  or  the  haughty  Molly 
Aston,  or  the  subhmated  methodistic  Hill  Boothby ;  and, 
lastly,  the  more  charming  Mrs.  Thrale."  Even  in  his 
advanced  age,  at  the  height  of  his  celebrity,  we  hear  his 
cries  of  lonely  wretchedness.  "  I  want  every  comfort ; 
my  life  is  very  solitary  and  very  cheerless.  Let  me 
know  that  I  have  yet  a  friend — let  us  be  kind  to  one 
another."  But  the  "  kindness  "  of  distant  friends  is  like 
the  polar  sun — too  far  removed  to  warm  us.  Those  who 
have  eluded  the  individual  tenderness  of  the  female,  are 


266  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

tortured  by  an  aching  void  in  their  feelings.  The  stoic 
Akenside,  in  his  "  Odes,"  has  preserved  the  history  of  a 
life  of  genius  in  a  series  of  his  own  feelings.  One  entitled, 
"  At  Study,"  closes  with  these  memorable  lines : — 

Me  though  no  peculiar  fair 
Touches  with  a  lover's  care  ; 

Though  the  pride  of  my  desire 
Asks  immortal  friendsliip's  uame, 
Asks  the  palm  of  honest  fame 

And  the  old  heroic  lyro  ; 
Though  the  day  have  smoothly  gone, 
Or  to  letter'd  leisure  known, 

Or  in  social  duty  speut ; 
Tet  at  the  eve  my  lonely  breast 
Seeks  in  vain  for  ]ierftct  rest, 

Languishes  for  true  content. 

If  ever  a  man  of  letters  lived  in  a  state  of  energy  and 
excitement  which  might  raise  him  above  the  atmosphere 
of  social  love,  it  Avas  assuredly  the  enthusiast,  Thomas 
Hollis,  who,  solely  devoted  to  literature  and  to  republi- 
canism, was  occujiied  in  furnishing  Europe  and  America 
with  editions  of  his  lavourite  authors.  He  would  not 
marry,  lest  marriage  should  interrupt  the  labours  of  his 
platonic  politics.  But  his  extraordinary  memoirs,  while 
they  show  an  intrepid  mind  in  a  robust  frame,  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  self-tormentor  who  had  trodden  down  tlie 
natural  bonds  of  domestic  life.  Hence  tlie  deep  "  dejec- 
tion of  his  spirits ;"  those  incessant  cries,  tliat  he  has  "  no 
one  to  advise,  assist,  or  cherish  those  magnanimous  pur- 
suits in  him."  At  length  he  retreated  into  the  country, 
in  utter  hopelessness.  "I  go  not  into  the  country  for 
attentions  to  agriculture  as  such,  nor  attentions  of  inter- 
est of  any  kind,  which  I  have  ever  despised  as  such ;  but 
as  a  used  nian^  to  pass  the  remainder  of  a  life  in  tolerable 
sanity  and  quiet,  after  luxviiig  given  up  the  liower  of  it, 
voluntarily,  day,  week,  month,  year  after  year,  successive 
to  cacli  other,  to  public  service,  and  being  uo  longer  able 


UNHAPPY  UNIONS.  2G7 

1^0  sustain,  in  hody  or  mind,  tlie  labours  that  I  ha^e 
chosen  to  go  through  without  falling  speedily  into  Ihe 
greatest  disorders,  and  it  might  be  imhecility  itself.  This 
is  not  colouring,  but  the  exact  plain  truth." 

Poor  moralist,  and  what  art  thou? 
A  solitary  fly  1 

Thy  joys  no  glittering  female  meets, 
No  hive  hast  thou  of  hoarded  sweets. 

Assuredly  it  would  not  have  been  a  question  whether 
these  literary  characters  should  have  married,  had  not 
Montaigne,  when  a  widower,  declared  that  "he  would 
not  marry  a  second  time,  though  it  were  Wisdom  itself;" 
hut  the  airy  Gascon  has  not  disclosed  how  far  Madame 
was  concerned  in  this  anathema. 

If  the  literary  man  unite  himself  to  a  woman  whose 
taste  and  whose  temper  are  adverse  to  his  pursuits,  he 
must  coixrageously  prepare  for  a  martyrdom.  Should  a 
female  mathematician  be  united  to  a  poet,  it  is  probable 
that  she  would  be  left  amidst  her  abstractions,  to  demon- 
strate to  herself  how  many  a  specious  diagram  fails  when 
brought  into  its  mechanical  operation  ;  or  discovering 
the  infinite  varieties  of  a  curve,  she  might  take  occasidti 
to  deduce  her  husband's  versatility.  If  she  become  as 
jealous  of  his  books  as  other  wives  might  be  of  his  mis- 
tresses, she  may  act  the  virago  even  over  his  innocent  pa- 
pers. The  wife  of  Bishop  Cooper,  while  her  husband  was 
employed  on  his  Lexicon,  one  day  consigned  the  volume 
of  many  years  to  the  flames,  and  obliged  that  scholar  to 
begin  a  second  siege  of  Troy  in  a  second  Lexicon,  The 
wife  of  Whitelocke  often  destroyed  his  MSS.,  and  the 
marks  of  her  nails  have  come  down  to  posterity  in  the 
numerous  lacerations  still  gaping  in  his  "Memorials." 
The  learned  Sir  Henry  Saville,  who  devoted  more  than 
half  his  life  and  nearly  ten  thousand  poxmds  to  his  mag- 
nificent edition  of  St.  Chrysostom,  led  a  very  uneasy  life 


2G8  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

between  the  saint  and  her  ladyship,  "What  with  her 
tenderness  for  him,  and  her  own  want  of  amyscnient, 
St,  Chrysostora,  it  appears,  incurred  more  than  one 
danger. 

Genius  has  not  preserved  itself  from  the  errors  and 
infirmities  of  matrimonial  connexions.  The  energetic 
character  of  Dante  could  neither  soften  nor  control  the 
asperity  of  his  lady  ;  and  when  that  great  poet  lived  in 
exile,  she  never  cared  to  see  him  more,  though  he  was  the 
father  of  her  six  children.  The  internal  state  of  the  house 
of  Domenichino  afflicted  that  great  artist  with  many  sor- 
rows. He  had  married  a  beauty  of  high  birth  and  ex- 
treme haughtiness,  and  of  the  most  avaricious  disposition. 
When  at  Naples  he  himself  dreaded  lest  the  avaricious 
passion  of  his  wife  should  not  be  able  to  resist  the  offers 
she  received  to  poison  him,  and  he  was  compelled  to  pro- 
vide and  dress  his  own  food.  It  is  believed  that  he  died 
of  poison.  What  a  picture  has  Passeri  left  of  the  domes- 
tic interior  of  this  great  artist !  Cosl  fra  mille  crepacuo- 
ri  mori  uno  cW  piti  eccellenti  artefici  del  mimdo  ;  che  oltre 
al  suo  valore  ptittorico  avrehhe  pi'iX  d''ogni  altri  marltato 
di  viver  sempre  per  Vonestd  personale.  "  So  perished, 
amidst  a  thousand  heart-breakings,  the  most  excellent  of 
artists;  who  besides  his  worth  as  a  painter,  deserved 
as  much  as  any  one  to  have  lived  for  his  excellence  as  a 
man." 

Milton  carried  nothing  of  the  greatness  of  his  mind  in 
the  choice  of  his  wives.  His  first  wife  was  the  object  of 
Budden  fancy.  He  left  the  metropolis  and  unexpectedly 
returned  a  married  man,  and  united  to  a  woman  of  such 
uncongenial  dispositions,  that  the  romp  was  friglitened 
at  the  literary  liabits  of  the  great  poet,  found  his 
house  solitary,  beat  his  nephews,  and  ran  away  after  a 
single  month's  residence  !  To  this  circumstance  wc  owe 
his  famous  treatise  on  Divorce;  and  a  party  (by  no 
means  extinct),  who  having  made  as  ill  clioices  in  their 


UNHAPPY  UNIONS^  2G9 

wives,  were  for  divorcing  as  fast  as  tliey  had  been  for 
marrying,  calling  themselves  Milto7iists. 

When  we  find  that  Moli^re,  so  skilful  in  human  life, 
married  a  girl  from  his  own  troop,  who  made  him  ex- 
perience all  those  bitter  disgusts  and  ridiculous  embar- 
rassments which  he  himself  played  off  at  the  theatre ; 
that  Addison's  fine  taste  in  morals  and  in  life  could  suffer 
the  ambition  of  a  courtier  to  prevail  with  himself  to  seek 
a  countess,  whom  he  describes  under  the  stormy  charac- 
ter of  Oceana,  and  who  drove  him  contemptuously  into 
solitude,  and  shortened" his  days;  and  that  Steele,  warm 
and  thoughtless,  was  united  to  a  cold  precise  "Miss 
Prue,"  as  he  himself  calls  her,  and  from  whom  he  never 
parted  without  bickerings ;  in  all  these  cases  we  censure 
the  great  men,  not  their  wives.*  Rousseau  has  honestly 
confessed  his  error.  He  had  united  himself  to  a  low, 
illiterate  woman ;  and  when  he  retreated  into  solitude, 
he  felt  the  weight  which  he  carried  with  him.  He 
laments  that  he  had  not  educated  his  wife :  "  In  a  docile 
age,  I  could  have  adorned  her  mind  with  talents  and 
knowledge,  which  would  have  more  closely  united  us  in 
retirement.  We  should  not  then  have  felt  the  intolerable 
tedium  of  a  tete-a-tete;  it  is  in  solitude  one  feels  the 
advantage  of  living  with  another  who  can  think."  Tlius 
Rousseau  confesses  the  fatal  error,  and  indicates  the 
right  principle. 

Yet  it  seems  not  absolutely  necessary  for  the  domestic 
happiness  of  the  literary  character,  that  his  wife  should 
be  a  literary  woman.  Tycho  Brahe,  noble  by  birth  as 
well  as  genius,  married  the  daughter  of  a  peasant.  By 
which  means  that  great  man  obtained  two  points  essential 
for  his  abstract  pursuits;  he  acquired  an  obedient  wife, 
and  freed  himself  of  his  noble  relatives,  who  would  no 
longer  hold  an  intercourse  with  the  man  who  was  spread- 
ing their  family  honours  into  more  ages  than  perhaps 
*  See  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  for  anecdotes  of  "Literary  "Wives." 


270  LITER  ART   CHARICTER. 

they  could  have  traced  them  backwards.  The  lady  of 
Wieland  was  a  pleasing  domestic  person,  who,  without 
reading  her  husband's  works,  knew  he  was  a  great  poet. 
Wieland  was  apt  to  exercise  his  imagination  in  declam- 
atory invectives  and  bitter  amplifications ;  and  the 
wi'iter  of  this  account,  in  perfect  Gei-man  taste,  assures 
us,  "  that  many  of  his  felicities  of  diction  were  thus 
struck  out  at  a  heat."  During  this  frequent  operation 
of  his  genius,  the  placable  temper  of  Mrs.  Wieland  over- 
came the  orgasm  of  the  German  bard  merely  by  persist- 
ing in  her  admiration  and  her  patience.  When  the  burst 
was  over,  Wieland  himself  was  so  charmed  by  her  docil- 
ity, that  he  usually  closed  with  giving  up  all  his 
opinions. 

There  is  another  soi't  of  homely  happiness,  aptly 
described  in  the  plain  words  of  Bishop  Newton.  He 
found  "the  study  of  sacred  and  classic  authors  ill  agreed 
with  butchers'  and  bakers'  bills;"  and  when  the  pros- 
pect of  a  bishopric  opened  on  him,  "  more  servants,  more 
entei'tainments,  a  better  table,"  &c.,  it  became  neces- 
sary to  look  out  for  "  some  clever,  sensible  woman  to  be 
his  wife,  who  would  lay  out  his  money  to  the  best  advan- 
tage, and  be  careful  and  tencler  of  his  health ;  a  friend 
and  companion  at  all  hours,  and  who  would  be  happier 
in  staying  at  home  than  be  perpetually  gadding  abroad." 
Such  are  the  wives  not  adapted  to  be  the  votaries,  but 
who  may  be  the  faithful  companions  through  life,  even 
of  a  man  of  genius. 

But  in  the  character  of  the  higher  female  we  may  dis- 
cover a  constitutional  faculty  of  docility  and  enthusiasm 
which  has  varied  Avith  the  genius  of  diiTerent  ages.  It  is 
the  opinion  of  an  elegant  metaphysician,  that  the  mind  of 
the  female  adopts  and  familiarises  itself  with  ideas  more 
easily  than  that  of  man,  and  hence  the  facility  Avith  which 
the  sex  contract  or  lose  habits,  and  accommodate  tlieir 
minds  to  new  situations.     Politics,  war,  and  learning,  are 


UNHAPPY  UNIONS.  2T1 

equally  objects  of  attainment  to  their  delightful  suscepti- 
bility. Love  has  the  fancied  transparency  of  the  came- 
leon.  "When  the  art  of  gOA-ernment  directed  the  feel- 
ings of  a  woman,  we  behold  Aspasia,  eloquent  with  the 
genius  of  Pericles,  instructing  the  Archons ;  Portia,  the 
wife  of  the  republican  Brutus,  devouring  burning  coals ; 
and  the  wife  of  Lucan,  transcribing  and  correcting  the 
Pharsalia,  before  the  bust  of  the  poet,  which  she  had 
placed  on  her  bed,  that  his  very  figure  might  never  be 
absent.  When  the  universities  were  opened  to  the  sex, 
they  acquired  academic  glory.  The  wives  of  military 
men  have  shared  in  the  perils  of  the  field ;  or  like  Anna 
Comnena  and  our  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  have  become  even 
their  historians.  In  the  age  of  love  and  sympathy,  the 
female  often  receives  an  indelible  pliancy  from  her  liter- 
ary associate.  His  pursuits  become  the  objects  of  her 
thoughts,  and  he  observes  his  own  taste  reflected  in  his 
family ;  much  less  through  his  own  influence,  for  his 
solitary  labours  often  preclude  him  fi-om  forming  them, 
than  by  that  image  of  his  oAvn  genius — the  mother  of  his 
childi-en  !  The  subjects,  the  very  books  which  enter  into 
his  literary  occupation,  are  cherished  by  her  imagina- 
tion ;  a  feeling  finely  opened  by  the  lady  of  the  author 
of  "  Sandford  and  Merton :"  "  My  ideas  of  my  husband," 
she  said,  "  are  so  much  associated  with  his  booJcs,  that  to 
part  with  them  would  be  as  it  were  breaking  some  of  the 
last  ties  which  still  connect  me  with  so  beloved  an 
object.  The  being  in  the  midst  of  books  he  has  been 
accustomed  to  read,  and  which  contain  his  marJcs  and 
notes ^  will  still  give  him  a  sort  of  existence  with  me. 
Unintelligible  as  such  fond  chimeras  may  appear  to 
many  people,  I  am  pei'suaded  they  are  not  so  to  you." 

With  what  simplicity  Meta  Mollers,  the  wife  of  Klop- 
stock,  in  her  German-English,  describes  to  Richardson, 
the  novelist,  the  manner  in  which  she  passes  her  day 
with  her  poet !  she  tells  him  that  "  she  is  always  present 


272  LITERARY   CUARACTER. 

at  the  birtli  of  the  youug  verses,  which  begin  by  fi-ag- 
ments,  here  and  there,  of  a  subject  with  whicli  his  soul  is 
yust  then  filled.  Persons  who  live  as  we  do  have  no 
need  of  two  chambers ;  we  are  always  in  the  same :  I 
with  my  little  work,  still !  still !  only  regarding  some- 
times my  husband's  face,  whicli  is  so  venerable  at  that 
time  with  tears  of  devotion,  and  all  the  sublimity  of  the 
subject — my  husband  reading  me  his  young  verses,  and 
suffering  my  criticisms," 

The  picture  of  a  literary  wife  of  antiquity  has  de- 
scended to  us,  touched  by  the  domestic  pencil  of  genius, 
in  the  susceptible  Calphurnia,  the  lady  of  the  younger 
Pliny.  "Her  affection  for  me,"  he  says,  "has  given  her 
a  turn  to  books :  her  passion  will  increase  with  our  days, 
for  it  is  not  my  youth  or  my  person,  which  time  grad- 
ually impairs,  but  my  reputation  and  my  glory,  of  which 
she  is  enamoured." 

I  have  been  told  that  BuiFon,  notwithstanding  his 
favourite  seclusion  of  his  old  tower  in  his  garden,  ac- 
knowledged to  a  friend  that  his  lady  had  a  considerable 
influence  over  his  compositions  :  "  Often,"  said  he,  "  when 
I  caimot  please  myself,  and  am  impatient  at  the  dis- 
appointment, Madame  de  Buffon  reanimates  ray  exertion, 
x)v  withdraws  rae  to  repose  for  a  short  interval ;  I  return 
to  my  pen  refreshed,  and  aided  by  her  advice." 

Gesner  declared  that  whatever  were  his  talents,  the 
person  who  had  most  contributed  to  develoj^e  them  was 
his  wife.  She  is  unknown  to  the  public ;  but  the  history 
of  the  mind  of  such  a  woman  is  discovered  in  the 
"  Letters  of  Gesner  and  his  Family,"  While  Gesner 
gave  liimself  up  entirely  to  his  favourite  arts,  drawing, 
painting,  etching,  and  poetry,  his  wife  would  often  reani- 
mate a  genius  that  was  apt  to  despond  in  its  attempts, 
and  often  exciting  him  to  new  productions,  her  sure  and 
delicate  taste  was  attentively  consulted  by  the  poet- 
painter — but  she  combined  the  most  practical  good  sense 


GESXER'S  WIFE.  273 

with  the  most  feeling  imagination.  This  forms  the  rare- 
ness of  the  character ;  for  this  same  woman,  who  unitcil 
with  her  husband  in  the  education  of  their  children,  to 
relieve  him  from  the  interruptions  of  common  business, 
carried  on  alone  the  concerns  of  his  house  in  la  Ubrairie.* 
Her  correspondence  with  her  son,  a  young  artist  travel- 
ling for  his  studies,  opens  what  an  old  poet  compre- 
hensively terms  "  a  gathered  mind."  Imagine  a  woman 
attending  to  the  domestic  economy,  and  to  the  commercial 
details,  yet  withdrawing  out  of  this  business  of  life  into 
the  more  elevated  pursuits  of  her  husband,  and  at  the 
same  time  combining  with  all  this  the  cares  and  counsels 
which  she  bestowed  on  her  son  to  form  the  artist  and 
the  man. 

To  know  this  incomparable  woman  we  must  hear  her. 
"  Consider  your  father's  precepts  as  oracles  of  wisdom ; 
they  are  the  result  of  the  experience  he  has  collected, 
not  only  of  life,  but  of  that  art  which  he  has  acquired 
simply  by  his  own  industry."  She  would  not  have  her 
son  suffer  his  strong  affection  to  herself  to  absorb  all 
other  sentiments.  "Had  you  remained  at  home,  and 
been  habituated  under  your  mother's  auspices  to  employ- 
ments merely  domestic,  what  advantage  would  you  have 
acquired  ?  I  own  we  should  have  passed  some  delightful 
winter  evenings  together;  but  your  love  for  the  arts, 
and  my  ambition  to  see  my  sons  as  much  distinguished 
for  their  talents  as  their  virtues,  would  have  been  a  con- 
stant source  of  regret  at  your  passing  your  time  in  a 
manner  so  little  worthy  of  you." 

How  profound  is  her  observation  on  the  strong  but 
confined  attachments  of  a  youth  of  genius!     "I  have 

*  Gesner's  father  was  a  bookseller  of  Zurich  ;  descended  from  a  fi^mily 
of  men  learned  in  the  exact  sciences,  he  vras  apprenticed  to  a  book- 
seller at  Berlin,  and  afterwards  entered  into  his  father's  business.  The 
best  edition  of  his  '•  Idylls  "  is  that  published  by  himself,  in  two  vol- 
umes, 4to,  illustrated  by  his  own  engravings. — Ed. 
13 


274  LITERARY   CHARACTER, 

frequently  remai-ked,  with  some  regret,  the  excessive  at- 
tachment you  indulge  towards  those  who  see  and  feel  as 
you  do  yourself,  and  the  total  neglect  with  which  you 
seem  to  treat  every  one  else.  I  should  reproach  a  man 
with  such  a  fault  who  was  destined  to  pass  his  life  in  a 
small  and  unvarying  circle ;  but  in  an  artist,  who  has  a 
great  object  in  view,  and  whose  country  is  the  whole 
world,  this  disposition  seems  to  be  likely  to  produce  a 
great  mamber  of  inconveniences.  Alas  !  my  son,  the  life 
you  have  hitherto  led  in  your  father's  house  has  been  in 
fact  a  pastoral  life,  and  not  such  a  one  as  was  necessary 
for  the  education  of  a  man  whose  destiny  summons  him 
to  the  world." 

And  when  her  son,  after  meditating  on  some  of  the 
most  glorious  productions  of  art,  felt  himself,  as  he  says, 
*'  disheartened  and  cast  down  at  the  unattainable  superi- 
ority of  the  artist,  and  that  it  was  only  by  reflecting  on 
the  immense  labour  and  continued  elforts  which  such 
masterpieces  must  have  reqiiired,  that  I  regained  my 
courage  and  my  ardour,"  she  observes,  "This  passage, 
my  dear  son,  is  to  me  as  precious  as  gold,  and  I  send  it 
to  you  again,  because  I  wish  you  to  impress  it  strongly 
on  your  mind.  The  remembrance  of  this  may  also  be  a 
useful  preservative  from  too  great  confidence  in  your 
abilities,  to  which  a  warm  imagination  may  sometimes  be 
liable,  or  from  the  despondence  you  might  occasionally 
feel  from  the  contemplation  of  grand  originals.  Continue, 
therefore,  my  dear  son,  to  form  a  sound  judgment  and  a 
I^ure  taste  from  your  own  observations ;  your  mind, 
while  yet  young  and  flexible,  may  receive  whatever  im- 
pressions you  wish.  Be  careful  that  your  abilities  do 
not  inspire  in  you  too  much  confidence,  lest  it  should 
happen  to  you  as  it  has  to  many  others,  that  they  have 
never  possessed  any  greater  merit  than  that  of  having 
good  abilities." 

One  more  extract,  to  preserve  an  incident  which  may, 


GESXER'S  WIFE.  275 

touch  the  heart  of  genius.  This  extraordinary  woman, 
^hose  characteristic  is  that  of  strong  sense  combined 
■with  delicacy  of  feeling,  "svould  check  her  German  sen- 
timentality at  the  moment  she  was  betraying  those  emo- 
tions in  which  the  imagination  is  so  powerfully  mixed 
up  with  the  associated  feelings.  Arriving  at  their  cot- 
tage at  Sihlwald,  she  proceeds — "  On  entering  the  par- 
lour three  small  pictures,  painted  by  you,  met  my  eyes. 
I  passed  some  time  in  contemplating  them.  It  is  now  a 
year,  I  thought,  since  I  saw  him  trace  these  pleasing 
forms ;  he  whistled  and  sang,  and  I  saw  them  grow  under 
his  pencil ;  now  he  is  far,  far  from  us.  In  short,  I  had 
the  weakness  to  press  my  lips  on  one  of  these  pictures. 
Tou  well  know,  my  dear  son,  that  I  am  not  much  ad- 
dicted to  scenes  of  a  sentimental  turn ;  but  to-day,  while 
I  considered  your  works,  I  could  not  restrain  this  little 
impulse  of  maternal  feelings.  Do  not,  however,  be  ap- 
prehensive that  the  tender  aifection  of  a  mother  will  ever 
lead  me  too  far,  or  that  I  shall  suffer  my  mind  to  be  too 
powerfully  impressed  with  the  painful  sensations  to 
which  your  absence  gives  birth.  My  reason  convinces 
me  that  it  is  for  your  welfare  that  you  are  now  in  a  place 
where  your  abilities  will  have  opportunities  of  unfolding, 
and  where  you  can  become  g^reat  in  your  art." 

Such  was  the  incomparable  wife  and  mother  of  the 
Gesners  !  Will  it  now  be  a  question  whether  matrimony 
be  incompatible  with  the  cultivation  of  the  ai"ts?  A 
wife  who  reanimates  the  drooping  genius  of  her  husband, 
and  a  mother  who  is  inspired  by  the  ambition  of  behold- 
ing her  sons  eminent,  is  she  not  the  real  being  which  the 
ancients  personified  in  their  Muse  ? 


276  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

Literary  friendships. — In  early  life. — Different  from  those  of  men  of  the 
world. — They  suffer  an  unrestrained  communication  of  their  ideas, 
and  bear  reprimands  and  exhortations. — Unity  of  feelings. — A  sym- 
pathy not  of  manners  but  of  feelings. — Admit  of  dissimilar  charac- 
ters.— Their  peculiar  glory. — Their  sorrow. 

AMONG  the  virtues  which  literatm'e  inspires,  is  often 
that  of  the  most  romantic  friendship.  The  delirium 
of  love,  and  even  its  lighter  caprices,  are  incompatible 
with  the  pursuits  of  the  student ;  but  to  feel  friendship 
like  a  passion  is  necessary  to  the  mind  of  genius  alter- 
nately elated  and  depressed,  ever  prodigal  of  feeling  and 
excursive  in  knowledge. 

The  qualities  which  constitute  literary  friendship,  com- 
pared with  those  of  men  of  the  world,  must  render  it  a 
sentiment  as  rare  as  love  itself,  which  it  resembles  in 
that  intellectual  tenderness  in  which  both  so  deeply 
participate. 

Born  "  in  the  dews  of  their  youth,"  this  friendship  will 
not  expire  on  their  tomb.  In  the  school  or  the  college 
this  immortality  begins ;  and,  engaged  in  similar  studies, 
should  even  one  excel  the  other,  he  will  find  in  him  the 
protector  of  his  fame ;  as  Addison  did  in  Steele,  "West  in 
Gray,  and  Gray  in  Mason.  Thus  Petrarch  was  the  guide 
of  Boccaccio,  thus  Boccaccio  became  the  defender  of  his 
master's  genius.  Perhaps  friendship  is  never  more  in- 
tense than  in  an  intercourse  of  minds  of  ready  counsels 
and  inspiring  ardours.  United  in  the  same  pursuits,  but 
directed  by  an  unequal  experience,  the  imperceptible 
superiority  interests,  Avithout  mortifying.  It  is  a  coun- 
sel, it  is  an  aid ;  in  whatever  form  it  shows  itself,  it  has 
nothing  of  the  malice  of  rivalry. 

A  beautiful  picture  of  such  a  friendship  among  men  of 


LITERARY  FEIEXDSHIPS.  277 

genius  offers  itself  in  the  history  of  Mignard,  the  great 
French  painter,  and  Du  Fresnoy,  the  great  critic  of  the 
art  itself  Du  Fresnoy,  abandoned  in  utter  scorn  by  his- 
stern  father,  an  apothecary,  for  his  entire  devotion  to  his 
seductive  art,  lived  at  Rome  in  voluntaiy  poverty,  till 
Mignard,  his  old  fellow-student,  arrived,  when  they  be- 
came known  by  the  name  of  "  the  inseparables."  The 
talents  of  the  friends  were  different,  but  their  studies 
were  the  same.  Their  days  melted  away  together  in 
drawing  from  the  ancient  statues  and  the  basso-relievos, 
in  studying  in  the  galleries  of  paintings,  or  among  the 
villas  which  embellish  the  environs  of  Rome.  One  roof 
sheltered  them,  and  one  table  siipplied  their  sober  meal. 
Light  were  the  slumbers  which  closed  each  day,  each  the 
pleasing  image  of  the  former.  But  this  remarkable  friend- 
ship was  not  a  simple  sentiment  which  limited  the  views 
of  "  the  Inseparables,"  for  with  them  it  was  a  perpetual 
source  of  mutual  usefulness.  They  gave  accounts  to  each 
other  of  whatever  they  observed,  and  carefully  noted 
their  own  defects.  Du  Fresnoy,  so  critical  in  the  theory 
of  the  art,  was  unsuccessful  in  the  practical  parts.  His 
delight  in  poetical  composition  had  retarded  the  progress 
of  his  pictorial  powers.  Not  having  been  taught  the 
handling  of  his  pencil,  he  worked  with  difficulty;  but 
Mignard  succeeded  in  giving  him  a  freer  command  and 
a  more  skilful  touch ;  while  Du  Fresnoy,  who  was  the 
more  literary  man,  enriched  the  invention  of  Mignard  by 
reading  to  him  an  Ode  of  Anacreon  or  Horace,  a  passage 
from  the  Iliad  or  Odyssey,  or  the  JEneid,  or  the  Jeru- 
salem Delivered,  which  offered  subjects  for  the  artist's 
invention,  who  would  throw  out  five  or  six  different 
sketches  on  the  same  subject ;  a  habit  which  so  highly 
improved  the  inventive  powers  of  Mignard,  that  he  could 
compose  a  fine  picture  with  playful  facility.  Thus  they 
lived  together,  mutually  enlightening  each  other.  Mig- 
nard supplied  Du  Fresnoy  with   all  that  fortune   had 


278  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

refused  him ;  and  when  he  was  no  more,  perpetuated  his 
fame,  which  he  felt  was  a  portion  of  his  own  celebrity, 
hy  publishing  his  posthumous  jyoeniyDeArte  Graphica;^ 
a  poem,  which  Mason  has  made  readable  by  his  versifica- 
tion, and  Reynolds  even  interesting  by  his  invaluable 
commentary. 

In  the  poem  Cowley  composed,  on  the  death  of  his 
friend  Harvey,  this  stanza  opens  a  pleasing  scene  of  two 
young  literary  friends  engaged  in  their  midnight  studies : 

Say,  for  you  saw  us,  ye  immortal  li^ihts  I 
How  oft  unwearied  have  we  spent  the  nights, 
Till  the  Ledajan  stars,  so  famed  for  love, 
Wonder'd  at  us  from  above. 
"We  spent  them  not  in  toys,  in  lust,  or  wine ; 

But  search  of  deep  philosophy, 

Wit,  eloquence,  and  poetry ; 
Arts  which  I  loved,  for  they,  my  friend,  were  thine. 

Touched  by  a  personal  knowledge  of  this  union  of 
genius  and  affection,  even  Malone  commemorates,  with 
unusual  warmth,  the  literary  friendships  of  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds;  and  with  a  felicity  of  fancy,  not  often  in- 
dulged, has  raised  an  unforced  parallel  betAveen  the 
bland  wisdom  of  Sir  Joshua  and  the  "mitis  sapientia 
Laeli."  "  What  the  illustrious  Scipio  was  to  Lajlius  was 
the  all-knowing  and  all-accomplished  Burke  to  Rey- 
nolds ;"  and  what  the  elegant  Ljelius  Avas  to  his  master 
Pansetius,  whom  he  gratefully  protected,  and  to  his  com- 
panion the  poet  Lucilius,  Avhom  he  patronised,  Avas  Rey- 
nolds to  Johnson,  of  whom  he  was  the  scholar  and  friend, 
and  to  Goldsmith,  whom  he  loved  and  aided.f 

*  La  Yie  do  Pierre  Mignard,  par  L'Abbe  do  Monville,  the  work  of 
an  amateur. 

\  Reynolds's  hospitality  was  unbounded  to  all  literary  men,  and  his 
evotiinps  were  devoted  to  their  society.  It  was  at  his  house  they  com- 
pared notes ;  and  the  President  of  the  Royal  Academy  obtained  that 
information  whicli  gave  him  a  full  knowledge  of  the  outward  world, 
which  his  ceaseless  occupation  could  not  else  have  allowed. — Eu. 


LrrERART  FRIENDSHIPS.  279 

Count  Azara  mourns  with  equal  tenderness  and  force 
over  the  memory  of  the  artist  and  the  writer  Mengg. 
"The  most  tender  friendship  would  call  forth  tears  iu 
this  sad  duty  of  scattering  flowers  on  his  tomb ;  but  the 
shade  of  my  extinct  friend  warns  me  not  to  be  satisfied 
with  dropping  flowers  and  tears — they  are  useless ;  and 
I  Avould  rather  accomplish  his  -ndshes,  in  making  known 
the  author  and  his  works." 

I  am  infinitely  delighted  by  a  circumstance  communi- 
cated to  me  by  one  who  had  visited  Gleim,  the  German 
poet,  who  seems  to  have  been  a  creature  made  up  alto- 
gether of  sensibility.  His  many  and  illustrious  friends 
he  had  never  forgotten,  and  to  the  last  hour  of  a  life, 
prolonged  beyond  his  eightieth  year,  he  j)ossessed  those 
interior  feelings  which  can  make  even  an  old  man  an 
enthusiast.  There  seemed  for  Gleim  to  be  no  extinction 
in  fi-iendship  w'hen  the  friend  was  no  more ;  and  he  had 
invented  a  singular  mode  of  gratifpng  his  feelings  of  lit- 
erary friendships.  The  visitor  found  the  old  man  in  a 
room  of  which  the  wainscot  was  panelled,  as  we  still  see 
among  us  in  ancient  houses.  In  every  panel  Gleim  had 
inserted  the  portrait  of  a  friend,  and  the  ajiartment  was 
crowded.  "  You  see,"  said  the  grey-haired  poet,  "  that 
I  never  have  lost  a  friend,  and  am  sitting  always  among 
them." 

Such  fi-iendship  can  never  be  the  lot  of  men  of  the 
■world ;  for  the  source  of  these  lies  in  the  interior  afiec- 
tions  and  the  intellectual  feelings.  Fontenelle  describes 
with  characteristic  delicacy  the  conversations  of  such  lit- 
erary fi-iends :  "  Our  days  passed  like  moments ;  thanks 
to  those  pleasures,  which,  however,  are  not  included  in 
those  which  are  commonly  called  pleasures."  The  friend- 
ships of  the  men  of  society  move  on  the  principle  of  pei*- 
sonal  interest,  but  interest  can  easily  separate  the  inter- 
ested ;  or  they  are  cherished  to  relieve  themselves  from 
the  listlessness  of  existence ;  but,  as  weariness  is  conta- 


280  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

gious,  the  contact  of  the  propagator  is  watched.  Men  of 
the  world  may  look  on  each  other  with  the  same  counte- 
nances, but  not  with  the  same  hearts.  In  the  common 
mart  of  life  intimacies  may  he  found  which  tei-minate  in 
complaint  and  contempt ;  the  more  they  know  one  an- 
other, the  less  is  their  mutual  esteem :  the  feeble  mind 
quarrels  with  one  still  more  imbecile  than  itself;  the  dis- 
solute riot  with  the  dissolute,  and  they  despise  their 
companions,  while  they  too  have  themselves  become  des- 
picable. 

Literary  friendships  are  marked  by  another  peculiarity ; 
the  true  philosophical  spirit  has  learned  to  bear  that 
shock  of  contrary  opinions  which  minds  less  meditative 
are  unequal  to  encounter.  Men  of  genius  live  in  the 
unrestrained  communication  of  their  ideas,  and  confide 
even  their  caprices  with  a  freedom  which  sometimes  star- 
tles ordinary  observers.  We  see  literary  men,  the  most 
opposite  in  dispositions  and  opinions,  deriving  from  each 
other  that  fulness  of  knowledge  which  unfolds  the  cer- 
tain, the  probable,  the  doubtful.  Topics  which  break  the 
world  into  factions  and  sects,  and  truths  which  ordinary 
men  are  doomed  only  to  hear  from  a  malignant  adver- 
sary, they  gather  from  a  friend !  If  neither  yields  up  his 
opinions  to  the  other,  they  are  at  least  certain  cf  silencd 
aiid  %  hp-aring ;  but  usually 

Tie  wiso  new  ■wisdom  from  the  wise  acquire. 

Tniji  generous  freedom,  which  spares  neither  repn 
mands  nor  -exhortation,  has  often  occurred  in  the  in 
tercourso  of  lite»*ary  men.  Hume  and  Kobertson  were 
engaged  in  the  same  studies,  but  with  very  opposite 
principles ;  yet  Robertson  declined  writing  the  English 
liistory,  which  he  aspired  to  do,  lest  it  should  injure  the 
plans  of  Hume ;  a  noble  sacrifice  ! 

Politics  once  divided  Boccaccio  and  Petrarch.  The 
poet  of  Valchiusa  had  never  forgiven  ihe  FlorenUnos  fot 


PETRARCH  AND  BOCCACCIO  231 

their  persecution  of  his  father.  By  the  mediation  of  Boc- 
caccio they  now  offered  to  reinstate  Petrarch  in  his  patri- 
mony and  his  honours.  Won  over  by  the  tender  solici- 
tude of  his  fiiend,  Petrarch  had  consented  to  return  to 
his  country ;  but  with  his  usual  inconstancy  of  temper, 
he  had  again  excused  himself  to  the  senate  of  Florence, 
and  again  retreated  to  his  solitude.  Nor  was  this  all; 
for  the  Visconti  of  Milan  had  by  their  flattery  and  prom- 
ises seduced  Petrarch  to  their  court ;  a  court,  the  avowed 
enemy  of  Florence.  Boccaccio,  for  the  honour  of  litera- 
ture, of  his  friend,  of  his  country,  indignantly  heard  of 
Petrarch's  fatal  decision,  and  addressed  him  by  a  letter — 
the  mosf  interesting  perhaps  Avhich  ever  passed  between 
two  literary  friends,  who  were  torn  asunder  by  the  mo- 
mentary passions  of  the  vulgar,  but  who  were  still  united 
by  that  immortal  friendship  which  literature  inspires,  and 
by  a  reverence  for  that  posterity  which  they  knew  would 
concern  itself  with  their  affairs. 

It  was  on  a  journey  to  Ravenna  that  Boccaccio  first 
heard  the  news  of  Petrarch's  abandonment  of  his  coun- 
try, when  he  thus  vehemently  addressed  his  brother- 
genius  : — 

"  I  would  be  silent,  but  I  cannot :  my  reverence  com- 
mands silence,  but  my  indignation  speaks.  How  has  it 
happened  that  Silvanus  (under  this  name  he  conceals  Pe- 
trarch) has  forgotten  his  dignity,  the  many  conversations 
we  had  together  on  the  state  of  Italy,  his  hatred  of  the 
archbishop  (Visconti),  his  love  of  solitude  and  freedom, 
so  necessary  for  study,  and  has  resolved  to  imprison  the 
Musee  at  that  court  ?  Whom  may  we  trust  again,  if  Sil- 
vanus, who  once  branded  II  V-isconti  as  the  Cruel,  a 
Polyphemus,  a  Cyclop,  has  avowed  himself  his  friend, 
and  placed  his  neck  under  the  yoke  of  him  whose  audaci- 
ty, and  pride,  and  tyranny,  he  so  deeply  abhorred  ?  How 
has  Visconti  obtained  that  which  King  Robert,  which 
the  pontiff,  the  emperor,  the  King  of  France,  could  not  ? 


282  LITEEART   CHARACTER. 

Am  I  to  conclude  that  you  accepted  this  favour  from  a 
disdain  of  your  fellow-citizens,  who  once  indeed  scorned 
you,  but  who  have  reinstated  you  in  the  paternal  patri- 
mony of  which  you  have  been  deprived  ?  I  do  not  dis- 
approve of  a  just  indignation;  but  I  take  Heaven  to  wit- 
ness that  I  believe  that  no  man,  whoever  he  may  be,  I'ightly 
and  honestly  can  labour  agauist  his  country,  whatever  be 
the  injury  he  has  received.  You  will  gain  nothing  by 
opposing  me  in  this  opinion;  for  if  stirred  n-p  by  the 
most  just  indignation  you  become  the  friend  of  the  enemy 
of  your  country,  unquestionably  you  will  not  spur  him  on 
to  war,  nor  assist  him  by  your  arm,  nor  by  your  counsel ; 
yet  how  can  you  avoid  rejoicing  with  him,  when  you 
hear  of  the  ruins,  the  conflagrations,  the  imprison- 
ments, death,  and  rapine,  which  he  sjiall  spread  among 
us?" 

Such  was  the  bold  appeal  to  elevated  feelings,  and  such 
the  keen  reproach  inspired  by  that  confidential  freedom 
which  can  only  exist  in  the  intercourse  of  great  minds. 
The  literary  friendship,  or  rather  adoration  of  Boccaccio 
for  Petrarch,  was  not  bartered  at  the  cost  of  his  patriot- 
ism :  and  it  is  worthy  of  our  notice  that  Petrarch,  whose 
personal  injuries  from  an  ungenerous  republic  were  rank- 
ling in  his  mind,  and  whom  even  the  eloquence  of  Boc- 
caccio could  not  disunite  from  his  protector  Visconti,  yet 
received  the  ardent  reproaches  of  his  friend  without  au- 
ger, though  not  without  maintaining  tlie  freedom  of  his 
own  opinions.  Petrarch  replied,  that  the  anxiety  of  Boc- 
caccio for  the  liberty  of  liis  friend  was  a  thought  most 
grateful  to  liim ;  but  he  assured  Boccaccio  that  he  preserve 
ed  his  freedom,  even  although  it  apjicarcd  that  he  bowed 
under  a  hard  yoke.  He  hoped  that  he  had  not  to  learn 
to  serve  in  his  old  age,  he  who  had  hitherto  studied  to 
preserve  liis  independence  ;  but,  in  respect  to  servitude, 
he  did  not  know  wliom  it  was  most  dis|)leasing  to  serve, 


LITERARY  FRIENDSHIPS.  283 

a  tyrant  like  Visconti,  or  with  Boccaccio,  a  people  of 
tyrants.*  •  ® 

The  imity  of  feeling  is  displayed  in  such  memorable 
associates  as  Beaumont  and  Fletcher ;  whose  labours  are 
so  combined,  that  no  critic  can  detect  the  mingled  pro- 
duction of  either  ;  and  whose  lives  are  so  closely  united, 
that  no  biographer  can  compose  the  memoirs  of  the  one 
without  running  into  the  history  of  the  other.  Their 
days  were  interwoven  as  their  verses.  Montaigne  and 
Charron,  in  the  eyes  of  posterity,  are  rivals  ;  but  such  lit- 
erary friendship  knows  no  rivalry.  Such  was  Montaigne's 
affection  for  Charron,  that  he  requested  him  by  his 
will  to  bear  the  arms  of  the  Montaignes ;  and  Charron 
evinced  his  gratitude  to  the  manes  of  his  departed  friend, 
by  leaving  his  fortune  to  the  sister  of  Montaigne. 

How  pathetically  Erasmus  mourns  over  the  death  of 
his  beloved  Sir  Thomas  More ! — "  In  Moro  mihi  videor 
extinctus''' — "  I  seem  to  see  myself  extinct  in  More."  It 
was  a  melancholy  presage  of  his  own  death,  which  shortly 
after  followed.  The  Doric  sweetness  and  simplicity  of 
old  Isaac  Walton,  the  angler,  were  reflected  in  a  mind  as 
clear  and  generous,  when  Charles  Cotton  continued  the 
feelings,  rather  than  the  little  work  of  Walton,  Metas- 
tasio  and  Farinelli  called  each  other  il  Gemello^  the  TavIu  : 
and  both  delighted  to  trace  the  resemblance  of  their 
lives  and  fates,  and  the  perpetual  alliance  of  the  verse 
and  the  voice.  The  famous  John  Baptista  Porta  had  a 
love  of  the  mysterious  parts  of  sciences,  such  as  physiog- 
nomy, natural  magic,  the  cryptical  arts  of  writing,  and 
projected  many  curious  inventions  which  astonished  his 
age,  and  which  we  hare  carried  to  perfection.  This  ex- 
traordinary man  saw  his  fame  somewhat  diminishing  by 
a  rumour  that  his  brother  Jolin  Vincent  had  a  great 
share  in  the  composition  of  his  works ;  but  this  never 

♦These  interesting  letters  are , preserved  in  Count  Baldelli'a  "Life 
of  Boccaccio,"  p.  115. 


2S4:  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

disturbed  him ;  and  Peiresc,  in  an  interesting  account  of 
a  visit  to  this  celebrated  Neifpolitan,  observed,  tliat 
though  now  now  aged  and  grey-haired,  he  treated  his 
younger  brother  as  a  son.  These  single-hearted  brothers, 
who  would  not  marry  that  they  might  never  be  separated, 
knew  of  but  one  fame,  and  that  was  the  fame  of  Porta. 

Go2;uet,  the  author  of  "  The  Origin  of  the  Arts  and 
Sciences,"  bequeathed  his  MSS.  and  his  books  to  his  friend ' 
Fugere,  with  whom  he  had  long  united  his  aifections  and 
his  studies,  that  his  surviving  friend  might  proceed  with 
them :  but  the  author  had  died  of  a  slow  and  painful  dis- 
order, which  Fugere  had  watched  by  his  side,  in  silent 
despair.  The  sight  of  those  MSS.  and  books  was  the 
friend's  death-stroke;  half  his  soul,  which  had  once  given 
them  animation,  was  parted  from  him,  and  a  few  Aveeks 
terminated  his  own  days.  When  Lloyd  heard  of  the 
death  of  Churchill,  he  neither  wished  to  survive  him,  nor 
did.*  The  Abbe  de  St.  Pierre  gave  an  interesting  proof 
of  literary  friendship  for  Varignon,  the  geometrician. 
They  were  of  congenial  dispositions,  and  St.  Pierre,  when 
he  went  to  Paris,  could  not  endure  to  part  with  Varignon, 
who  was  too  poor  to  accompany  him ;  and  St.  Pierre  was 
not  rich.  A  certain  income,  however  moderate,  was 
necessary  for  the  tranquil  pursuits  of  geometry.  St. 
Pierre  presented  Varignon  -svith  a  portion  of  his  small 
income,  accompanied  by  that  delicacy  of  feeling  which 
men  of  genius  who  know  each  other  can  best  conceive : 
"I  do  not  give  it   you,"  said  St.  Pien-e,  "as  a  salary 

*  Tliis  event  is  thus  told  by  Southey :  "  The  news  of  CliurchiU'R  death 
was  somewhat  abruptly  announced  to  Lloyd  as  he  sat  at  dinner;  ho 
was  seized  with  a  sudden  sickness,  and  saying,  '  I  shall  follow  poor 
Charles,'  took  to  his  bod,  from  which  he  never  rose  again;  dying.  If 
ever  man  died,  of  a  broken  heart.  The  tragedy  did  not  end  here: 
Churchill's  favourite  sister,  who  is  said  to  have  possessed  nuich  of 
her  brother's  sense,  and  spirit,  and  genius,  and  to  have  been  betrollied 
to  Lloyd,  attended  him  during  his  illness,  and  sinking  under  the  double 
loss,  soon  followed  her  brother  and  her  lover  to  the  grave." — Ed. 


LITERARY  FRIENDSHIPS.  2S5 

but  as  an  annuity,  that  you  may  he  independent  and  quit 
me  when  you  dislike  me."  The  same  circumstance  occur- 
red between  Akenside  and  Dyson.  Dyson,  when  the 
poet  was  in  great  danger  of  adding  one  more  illustrious 
name  to  the  "  Calamities  of  Authors,"  interposed  between 
him  and  ill-fortmie,  by  allowing  him  an  annuity  of  three 
hundred  a-year ;  and,  when  he  found  the  fame  of  his  lit- 
erary friend  attacked,  although  not  m  the  habit  of  com- 
position, he  published  a  defence  of  his  poetical  and  phi- 
losophical character.  The  name  and  character  of  Dyson 
have  been  suffered  to  die  away,  without  a  single  tribute 
of  even  biographical  sympathy ;  as  that  of  Longueville, 
the  modest  patron  of  Butler,  in  whom  that  great  political 
satirist  found  what  the  careless  ingratitude  of  a  court 
had  denied  :  but  in  the  record  of  literary  glory,  the  pa- 
tron's name  should  be  inscribed  by  the  side  of  the  literary 
character :  for  the  public  incurs  an  obligation  whenever 
a  man  of  genius  is  protected. 

The  statesman  Fouquet,  deserted  by  all  others,  wit- 
nessed La  Fontaine  hastening  eveiy  literary  man  to  his 
prison-gate.  Many  have  inscribed  their  works  to  their 
disgraced  patrons,  as  Pope  did  so  nobly  to  the  Earl  of 
Oxford  in  the  ToAver : 

"WTien  interest  calls  off  all  her  sneaking  train, 
And  all  the  obliged  desert,  and  aU  the  vain, 
They  wait,  or  to  the  scaffold,  or  the  cell, 
When  the  last  lingering  friend  has  bid  farewell. 

Literary  friendship  is  a  sympathy  not  of  manners,  but 
of  feelings.  The  personal  character  may  happen  to  be 
very  opposite :  the  vivacious  may  be  loved  by  the  melan- 
cholic, and  the  wit  by  the  man  of  learning.  He  who  is 
vehement  and  vigorous  will  feel  himself  a  double  man 
by  the  side  of  the  friend  who  is  calm  and  subtle.  When 
we  observe  such  friendships,  we  are  apt  to  imagine  that 
they  are  not  real  because  the  characters  are  dissimilar ; 
but  it  is  their  common  tastes  and  pursuits  which  form  a 


286  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

bond  of  union,  Pomponius  Lretus,  so  called  from  liis  natu- 
ral good-humour,  was  the  personal  friend  of  Hermolaus 
Barbarus,  whose  saturnine  and  melancholy  disposition  he 
often  exhilarated  ;  the  warm,  impetuous  Luther  was  the 
beloved  friend  of  the  mild  and  amiable  Melancthon ;  the 
caustic  Boileau  was  the  companion  of  Racine  and  Mo- 
liore ;  and  France,  perhaps,  owes  the  chefs-cVceuvre  of  her 
tragic  and  her  comic  poet  to  her  satirist.  The  delicate 
taste  and  the  refining  ingenuity  of  Hurd  only  attached 
him  the  more  to  the  impetuous  and  dogmatic  Warbur- 
ton.*  No  men  could  be  more  opposite  in  personal  char- 
acter than  the  careless,  gay,  and  hasty  Steele,  and  the 
cautious,  serious,  and  the  elegant  Addison  ;  yet  no  liter- 
ary friendship  was  more  fortunate  than  their  union. 

One  glory  is  reserved  for  literary  friendship.  The 
friendship  of  a  great  name  indicates  the  greatness  of  the 
character  who  appeals  to  it.  When  Sydenham  mentioned, 
as  a  proof  of  the  excellence  of  his  method  of  treating 
acute  diseases,  that  it  had  received  the  approbation  of 
his  illustrious  friend  Locke,  the  philosopher's  opinion 
contributed  to  the  physician's  success. 

Such  have  been  the  friendshijDS  of  great  literary  char- 
acters ;  but  too  true  it  is,  that  they  have  not  always  con- 
tributed thus  largely  to  their  mutual  happiness.  The 
querulous  lament  of  Gleim  to  Klopstock  is  too  generally 
participated.  As  Gleim  lay  on  his  death-bed  he  addressed 
the  great  bard  of  Germany — "  I  am  dying,  dear  Klop- 
stock ;  and,  as  a  dying  man  will  I  say,  in  this  world  we 
liave  not  lived  long  enough  together  and  for  each  other; 
but  in  vain  would  we  now  recal  the  past !"  What  ten- 
derness in  the  reproach !  What  self-accusation  in  its 
modesty ! 

*  For  a  full  account  of  their  literary  career  see  the  first  article  in 
"  Quarrels  of  Authors." 


PERSONAL  CHARACTER.  287 


CHAPTER    XX. 

The  literary  and  the  personal  character. — The  personal  dispositions  of 
an  author  may  be  the  reverse  of  those  which  appear  in  his 
writings. — Erroneous  conceptions  of  the  character  of  distant 
authors. — Paradoxical  appearances  in  the  history  of  Genius. — "Why 
the  character  of  the  man  may  be  opposite  to  that  of  his  writings. 


A 


RE  the  personal  dispositions  of  an  author  discover- 
able in  his  -writings,  as  those  of  an  artist  are 
imagined  to  appear  in  his  works,  where  Michael  Angelo 
is  always  great,  and  Raphael  ever  graceful  ? 

Is  the  moralist  a  moral  man  ?  Is  he  malignant  who 
publishes  caustic  satires  ?  Is  he  a  libertine  who  composes 
loose  poems  ?  And  is  he,  whose  imagination  delights  in 
terror  and  in  blood,  the  very  monster  he  paints  ? 

Many  licentious  writers  have  led  chaste  lives.  La 
Mothe  le  Vayer  wrote  two  works  of  a  free  nature ;  yet 
his  was  the  unblemished  life  of  a  retired  sage.  Bayle  is 
the  too  faithful  compiler  of  impurities,  but  he  resisted  the 
voluptuousness  of  the  senses  as  much  as  Newton.  La 
Fontaine  wrote  tales  fertile  in  intrigue,  yet  the  "  bon- 
homme"  has  not  left  on  record  a  single  ingenious  amour 
of  his  ovm.  The  Queen  of  Navarre's  Tales  are  gross  im- 
itations of  Boccaccio's;  but  she  herself  was  a  princess  of 
irreproachable  habits,  and  had  given  proof  of  the  most 
rigid  virtue  ;  but  stories  of  intrigues,  told  in  a  natural 
style,  formed  the  fashionable  literature  of  the  day,  and 
the  genius  of  the  female  writer  was  amused  in  becomingr 
an  historian  without  being  an  actor.  Fortiguerra,  the 
author  of  the  Ricciardetto,  abounds  with  loose  and  licen- 
tious descriptions,  and  yet  neither  his  manners  nor  his 
personal  character  were  stained  by  the  offending  freedom 
of-  his  inventions.  Smollett's  character  is  immaculate ; 
yet  he  has  described  two  scenes  which  offend  even  in  the 


288  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

license  of  imagination.  Cowley,  who  boasts  with  such 
gaiety  of  the  versatility  of  his  passion  among  so  many  mis- 
tresses, wanted  even  the  confidence  to  address  one.  Thus, 
licentious  writers  may  be  very  chaste  persons.  The  imag- 
ination may  be  a  volcano  while  the  heart  is  an  Alp  of  ice. 
Turn  to  the  moralist — there  we  find  Seneca,  a  usurer 
of  seven  millions,  writing  on  moderate  desires  on  a  table 
of  gold.  Sallust,  who  so  eloquently  declaims  against  the 
licentiousness  of  the  age,  was  repeatedly  accused  in  the 
senate  of  public  and  liabitual  debaucheries ;  and  when 
this  inveigh er  against  the  spoilers  of  provinces  attained 
to  a  remote  government,  he  pillaged  like  Verres.  That 
"  Demosthenes  was  more  capable  of  recommending  than 
of  imitating  the  virtues  of  our  ancestors,"  is  the  observa- 
tion of  Plutarch.  Lucian,  when  young,  declaimed  against 
the  friendship  of  the  great,  as  another  name  for  servitude ; 
but  when  his  talents  procured  him  a  situation  under 
the  emperor,  he  facetiously  compared  himself  to  those 
quacks  who,  themselves  j^lagued  by  a  perpetual  cough, 
ofier  to  sell  an  infallible  remedy  for  one.  Sir  Thomas 
More,  in  his  "  Utopia,"  declares  that  no  man  ought  to  be 
punished  for  his  religion  ;  yet  he  became  a  fierce  perse- 
cutor, flogging  and  racking  men  fol*  his  own  "  true  faith." 
At  the  moment  the  poet  Rousseau  was  giving  versions  of 
the  Psalms,  full  of  unction,  as  our  Catholic  neighbours 
express  it,  he  was  profaning  the  same  j^en  with  infiimous 
epigrams ;  and  an  erotic  poet  of  our  times  has  composed 
night-hymns  in  churchyards  with  the  same  ardour  with 
which  lie  poured  forth  Anacreontics.  Napoleon  said  of 
Bernardin  St.  Pierre,  whose  writings  breathe  the  warm 
principles  of  humanity  and  social  happiness  in  every 
page,  that  he  was  one  of  the  worst  private  characters  in 
France.  I  have  heard  this  from  other  quarters ;  it  startles 
one !  The  pathetic  genius  of  Sterne  played  about  his 
head,  but  never  reached  his  heart.*     Cardinal  Richelieu 

*  See  what  is  said  on  this  siibject  in  the  article  on  Sterno  in  tho 
"  Literary  Miscellauioa,"  of  tho  present  volumo. 


PERSONAL   DISPOSITION.  289 

wrote  "  The  Perfection  of  a  Christian,  or  the  Life  of  a 
Chi'istian ;"  yet  was  he  an  ntter  stranger  to  Gospel  max- 
ims ;  and  Frederick  the  Great,  when  young,  published  his 
"  Anti-Machiavel,"  and  deceived  the  world  by  the  promise 
of  a  pacific  reign.  This  military  genius  protested  against 
those  political  arts  which  he  afterwards  adroitly  practised, 
uniting  the  lion's  head  with  the  fox's  tail — and  thus  him- 
self realising  the  political  monster  of  Machiavel ! 

And  thus  alsD  is  it  with  the  personal  dispositions  of  an 
author,  which  may  be  quite  the  reverse  from  those  which 
appear  in  his  writings.  Johnson  would  not  believe  that 
Horace  was  a  happy  man  because  his  verses  were  cheer- 
ful, any  more  than  he  could  think  Pope  so,  because  the 
poet  is  continually  informing  us  of  it.  It  surprised 
Spence  when  Pope  told  him  that  Rowe,  the  tragic  poet, 
whom  he  had  considered  so  solemn  a  personage,  "  would 
laugh  all  day  long,  and  do  nothing  else  but  laugh." 
Lord  Kaimes  says,  that  Arbuthnot  must  have  been  a 
great  genius,  for  he  exceeded  Swift  and  Addison  in 
humorous  painting ;  although  we  are  informed  he  had 
nothing  of  that  peculiarity  in  his  character.  Young, 
who  is  constantly  contemning  preferment  in  his  writings, 
was  all  his  life  pining  after  it ;  and  the  conversation  of 
the  sombrous  author  of  the  "  Night  Thoughts "  was  of 
the  most  volatile  kind,  abounding  with  trivial  puns.  He 
was  one  of  the  first  who  subscribed  to  the  assembly  at 
Wellwyn.  Mrs.  Carter,  who  greatly  admired  his  sublime 
poetry,  expressing  her  surprise  at  his  social  converse,  he 
replied,  "  Madam,  there  is  much  difierenee  between  writ- 
ing and  talking." 

Moliere,  on  the  contrary,  whose  humour  is  so  perfectly 
comic,  and  even  ludicrous,  was  thoughtful  and  serious, 
and  even  melancholy.  His  strongly-featured  physiog- 
nomy exhibits  the  face  of  a  great  tragic,  rather  than  of  a 
great  comic,  poet.  Boileau  called  Moliere  "  The  Contem- 
plative Man."  Those  who  make  the  world  laugh  often 
19 


290  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

themselves  langli  the  least.  A  famous  and  witty  harle« 
quin  of  France  was  overcome  with  hypochondi-iasm,  and 
consulted  a  physician,  who,  after  inquiring  about  his  mal- 
ady, told  his  miserable  patient,  that  he  knew  of  no  other 
medicine  for  him  than  to  take  frequent  doses  of  Carlin. — 
*'  I  am  Carlin  himself,"  exclaimed  the  melancholy  man,  in 
despair.  Burton,  the  pleasant  and  vivacious  author  of 
"  The  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,"  of  whom  it  is  noticed, 
that  he  could  in  an  interval  of  vapours  raise  laughter  in 
any  company,  in  his  chamber  was  "  mute  and  mopish," 
and  at  last  was  so  overcome  by  that  intellectual  disorder, 
which  he  appeared  to  have  got  rid  of  by  writing  his 
volume,  that  it  is  beheved  he  closed  his  life  in  a  fit  of 
melancholy.* 

Could  one  have  imagined  that  the  brilliant  wit,  the  luxu- 
riant raillery,  and  the  fine  and  deep  sense  of  Pascal, 
could  have  combined  with  the  most  opposite  qualities — 
the  hypochondriasm  and  bigotry  of  an  ascetic  ?  Roche- 
foucauld, in  private  life,  was  a  conspicuous  example  of 
all  those  moral  qualities  of  which  he  seemed  to  deny  the 
existence,  and  exhibited  in  this  respect  a  striking  con- 
trast to  the  Cardinal  de  Ketz,  who  has  presumed  to  cen- 
sure him  for  his  want  of  faith  in  the  reality  of  virtue ; 
but  De  Retz  himself  was  the  unbeliever  in  disinterested 
virtue.  This  gTcat  genius  was  one  of  those  pretended 
patriots  destitute  of  a  single  one  of  the  virtues  for  which 
he  was  the  clamorous  advocate  of  faction. 

When  Valincour  attributed  the  excessive  tenderness  in 
the  tragedies  of  Racine  to  the  poet's  own  impassioned 
character,  the  son  amply  showed  that  his  father  was  by 
no  means  the  slave  of  love.  Racine  never  wrote  a  single 
love-poem,  nor  even  had  a  mistress ;  and  his  wife  had 
never  read  his  tragedies,  for  poetry  was  not  her  delight. 

*  It  is  reported  of  hiin  that  his  only  mode  of  alleviating  his  molau- 
choly  \v;i8  by  walking  from  his  college  at  Oxford  to  the  bridge,  to  listen 
to  the  rougli  jokes  of  the  bargcrnon. 


PERSONAL  DISPOSITION.  291 

Racine's  motive  for  making  love  the  constant  source  of 
action  in  his  tragedies,  was  from  the  principle  •which  has 
influenced  so  many  poets,  who  usually  conform  to  the 
prevalent  taste  of  the  times.  In  the  court  of  a  young 
monarch  it  was  necessary  that  heroes  should  be  lovers ; 
Corneille  had  nobly  run  in  one  career,  and  Racine  could 
not  have  existed  as  a  great  poet  had  he  not  rivalled  him 
in  an  opposite  one.  The  tender  Racine  was  no  lover; 
but  he  was  a  subtle  and  epigrammatic  observer,  before 
whom  his  convivial  friends  never  cared  to  open  their 
minds ;  and  the  caustic  Boileau  truly  said  of  him,  "Racine 
IS  far  more  malicious  than  I  am." 

Alfieri  speaks  of  his  mistress  as  if  he  lived  with  her  in 
the  most  unreserved  familiarity;  the  reverse  was  the 
case.  And  the  gratitude  and  aifection  with  which  he 
describes  his  mother,  and  which  she  deserved,  entered 
so  little  into  his  habitual  feelings,  that,  after  their  early 
separation,  he  never  saw  her  but  once,  though  he  often 
passed  through  the  country  where  she  resided. 

Johnson  has  composed  a  beautiful  Rambler,  describing 
the  pleasures  which  result  from  the  influence  of  good- 
humour  ;  and  somewhat  remarkably  says,  "  Without 
good-humour,  learning  and  bravery  can  be  only  formida- 
ble, and  confer  that  superiority  which  swells  the  heart  of 
the  lion  in  the  desert,  where  he  roars  without  reply,  and 
ravages  without  resistance."  He  who  could  so  finely 
discover  the  happy  influence  of  this  pleasing  quality  was 
himself  a  stranger  to  it,  and  "  the  roar  and  the  ravage" 
were  familiar  to  our  lion.  Men  of  genius  frequently  sub- 
stitute their  beautiful  imagination  for  spontaneous  and 
natural  sentiment.  It  is  not  therefoi*e  surprising  if  we 
are  often  eri'oneous  in  the  conception  we  form  of  the  per- 
sonal character  of  a  distant  author.  Klopstock,  the 
votary  of  the  muse  of  Zion,  so  astonished  and  warmed 
the  sage  Bodmer,  that  he  invited  the  inspired  bard  to  his 
house :  but  his  visitor  shocked  the  grave  professor,  when, 


292  LTTERAET  CHARACTER. 

instead  of  a  poet  rapt  in  silent  meditati^  l,  a  volatile 
youth  leaped  out  of  the  chaise,  who  was  an  enthusiast  for 
retirement  only  when  writing  verses.  An  artist,  whose 
pictures  exhibit  a  series  of  scenes  of  domestic  tenderness, 
awakening  all  the  charities  of  private  life,  I  have  heard, 
participated  in  them  in  no  other  way  than  on  his  canvas, 
Evelyn,  who  has  written  in  favour  of  active  life,  "  loved 
and  lived  in  retirement ;"  *  while  Sir  George  Mackenzie, 
who  had  been  continually  in  the  bustle  of  business,  framed 
a  eulogium  on  solitude.  "We  see  in  Machiavel's  code  of 
tyranny,  of  depravity,  and  of  criminal  violence,  a  horrid 
picture  of  human  nature ;  but  this  retired  philosopher 
was  a  friend  to  the  freedom  of  his  country ;  he  partici- 
pated in  none  of  the  crimes  he  had  recorded,  but  drew 
up  these  systemized  crimes  "  as  an  observer,  not  as  a 
criminal."  Drummond,  whose  sonnets  still  retain  the 
beauty  and  the  sweetness  and  the  delicacy  of  the  most 
amiable  imagination,  was  a  man  of  a  harsh  irritable  tem- 
per, and  has  been  thus  characterised : — 

Testie  Drummoud  could  not  speak  for  fretting. 

Thus  authors  and  artists  may  yield  no  certain  indica- 
tion of  their  personal  characters  in  their  works.  Incon- 
stant men  will  write  on  constancy,  and  licentious  minds 
may  elevate  themselves  into  poetry  and  piety.  We 
should  be  unjust  to  some  of  the  greatest  geniuses  if  the 

*  Since  this  was  written  the  correspondence  of  Evelyn  has  appeared, 
by  which  we  find  that  he  apologised  to  Cowley  for  having  publislied 
this  very  treatise,  whicli  seemed  to  condemn  that  life  of  study  and 
privacy  to  which  they  were  botli  equally  attached ;  and  confesses  that 
the  whole  must  be  considered  as  a  mere  sportive  effusion,  requesting 
that  Cowley  would  not  suppose  its  principles  formed  his  private  opin- 
ions. Thus  Leibnitz,  wo  are  told,  laughed  at  the  fanciful  system 
revealed  in  his  Thcodiae,  and  acknowledged  tliat  he  never  wrote  it  in 
earnest;  that  a  philosopher  is  not  always  obliged  to  write  seriously, 
and  that  to  invent  an  hypothesis  is  only  a  proof  of  the  force  of  im- 
agination. 


MONTAIGNE.  293 

extraordinary  sentiments  -n-hich  they  pnt  into  the  months 
of  their  dramatic  personages  are  maliciously  to  be  applied 
to  themselves.  Euripides  was  accused  of  atheism  when 
lie  introduced  a  denier  of  the  gods  on  the  stage.  Milton 
has  been  censured  by  Clarke  for  the  impiety  of  Satan ; 
and  an  enemy  of  Shakspeare  might  have  reproached  hira 
for  his  perfect  delineation  of  the  accomplished  villain 
lago,  as  it  was  said  that  Dr.  Moore  was  hurt  in  the  opin- 
ions of  some  by  his  odious  Zeluco.  Crebillon  complains 
of  this : — "  They  charge  me  with  all  the  iniquities  of 
Atreus,  and  they  consider  me  in  some  places  as  a  wretch 
with  whom  it  is  unfit  to  associate ;  as  if  all  which  the 
mind  invents  must  be  derived  from  the  heart."  This 
poet  offers  a  striking  instance  of  the  little  alliance  exist- 
ing between  the  literary  and  personal  dispositions  of  an 
author.  Crebillon,  who  exulted,  on  his  entrance  into  the 
French  Academy,  that  he  had  never  tinged  his  pen  with 
the  gall  of  satire,  delighted  to  strike  on  the  most  harrow- 
ing string  of  the  tragic  lyre.  In  his  Atreus  the  father 
drinks  the  blood  of  his  son ;  in  his  Mhadamistus  the  son 
expires  under  the  hand  of  the  father ;  in  his  Electra  the 
son  assassinates  the  mother.  A  poet  is  a  painter  of  the 
soul,  but  a  great  artist  is  not  therefore  a  bad  man. 

Montaigne  appears  to  have  been  sensible  of  this  fact 
in  the  literary  character.  Of  authors,  he  says,  he  likes 
to  read  their  little  anecdotes  and  private  passions : — "  Car  . 
j'ai  une  sihguliere  curiosite  de  connaitre  I'ame  et  les  naifs 
jugemens  de  mes  auteurs.  II  faut  bien  juger  leur  suffi- 
sance,  mais  non  pas  leurs  moeurs,  ni  eux,  par  cette  montre 
de  leurs  ecrits  qu'ils  etalent  au  theatre  du  monde." 
Which  may  be  thus  translated :  "  For  I  have  a  singular 
curiosity  to  know  the  soul  and  simple  opinions  of  my 
authors.  We  must  judge  of  their  ability,  but  not  of 
their  manners,  nor  of  themselves,  by  that  show  of  their 
writings  which  they  display  on  the  theatre  of  the  world." 
This  is  very  just;   are  we  yet  sure,  however,  that  thg 


294  LITERARY   CnARACTER. 

simplicity  of  this  old  favourite  of  Europe  might  not  have 
been  as  much  a  theatrical  gesture  as  the  sentimentality 
of  Sterne  ?  The  great  authors  of  the  Port-Royal  Logic 
have  raised  severe  objections  to  prove  that  Montaigne 
was  not  quite  so  open  in  respect  to  those  simple  details 
which  he  imagined  might  diminish  his  personal  import- 
ance with  his  readers.  He  pretends  that  he  reveals  all 
his  infirmities  and  weaknesses,  while  he  is  perpetually 
passing  himself  off  for  something  more  than  he  is.  Ho 
carefully  informs  us  that  he  has  "  a  page,"  the  usual  at- 
tendant of  an  independent  gentleman,  and  lives  in  an  old 
family  chateau ;  when  the  fact  was,  that  his  whole  reve- 
nue did  not  exceed  six  thousand  livres,  a  state  beneath 
mediocrity.  He  is  also  equally  careful  not  to  drop  any 
mention  of  his  having  a  cleric  with  a  hag  /  for  he  was  a 
counsellor  of  Bordeaux,  but  affected  the  gentleman  and 
the  soldier.  He  trumpets  himself  forth  for  having  been 
mayor  of  Bordeaux,  as  this  offered  an  opportunity 
of  telling  us  that  he  succeeded  Marshal  Biron,  and  re- 
signed it  to  3farshal  Matignon.  Could  he  have  discov- 
ered that  any  marshal  had  been  a  lawyer  he  would  not 
have  sunk  that  part  of  his  life.  Montaigne  himself  has 
said,  "  that  in  forming  a  judgment  of  a  man's  life,  par- 
ticular regard  should  be  paid  to  his  behaviour  at  the  end 
of  it ;"  and  he  more  than  once  tells  us  that  the  chief 
study  of  liis  life  is  to  die  calm  and  silent ;  and  that  he 
will  plunge  himself  headlong  and  stupidly  into  death,  as 
into  an  obscure  abyss,  which  swallows  one  up  in  an  in- 
stant ;  that  to  die  was  the  affair  of  a  moment's  suffering, 
and  required  no  precepts.  He  talked  of  reposing  on  the 
"  pillow  of  doubt."  But  how  did  this  great  philosojjher 
die  ?  He  called  for  the  more  powerful  opiates  of  the  in- 
fallible church  !  The  mass  was  performed  in  his  cham- 
ber, and,  in  rising  to  embrace  it,  his  liands  dropped  and 
failed  him ;  thus,  as  Professor  Dugald  Stewart  observes 
on  this  philosoj^her — "  He  expired  in  j)erforming  what  his 


CONTRASTS,   PERSONAL   AND   LITERARY.  295 

old  preceptor,  Buchanan,  would  not  have  scrupled  to 
describe  as  an  act  of  idolatry." 

We  must  not  then  consider  that  he  who  paints  vice 
with  energy  is  therefore  vicious,  lest  we  injure  an  hon- 
ourable man ;  nor  must  we  imagine  that  he  who  celebrates 
virtue  is  therefore  virtuous,  for  we  may  then  repose  on 
a  heart  which  kuo"\nng  the  right  pursues  the  wrong. 

These  paradoxical  appearances  in  the  history  of  gen- 
ius present  a  curious  moral  phenomenon.  Much  must  be 
attributed  to  the  ^jlastic  nature  of  the  versatile  faculty 
itself.  Unquestionably  many  men  of  genius  have  often 
resisted  the  indulgence  of  one  talent  to  exercise  another 
with  equal  power ;  and  some,  who  have  solely  composed 
sermons,  could  have  touched  on  the  foibles  of  society 
with  the  spirit  of  Horace  or  Juvenal.  Blackstone  and 
Sir  William  Jones  directed  that  genius  to  the  austere 
studies  of  law  and  philology,  which  might  have  excelled 
in  the  poetical  and  historical  character.  So  versatile  is 
this  faculty  of  genius,  that  its  possessors  are  sometimes 
uncertain  of  the  manner  in  which  they  shall  treat  their 
subject,  whether  gravely  or  ludicrously.  When  Breboeuf, 
the  French  translator  of  the  Pharsalia  of  Lucan,  had  com- 
pleted the  first  book  as  it  now  appears,  he  at  the  same 
time  composed  a  burlesque  version,  and  sent  both  to  the 
great  arbiter  of  taste  in  that  day,  to  decide  which  the 
poet  should  continue.  The  decision  proved  to  be  diffi- 
cult. Are  there  not  writers  who,  with  all  the  vehemence 
of  genius,  by  adopting  one  principle  can  make  all  things 
shrink  into  the  pigmy  form  of  ridicule,  or  by  adopting 
another  principle  stai'tle  us  by  the  gigantic  monsters  of 
their  own  exaggerated  imagination  ?  On  this  princijile, 
of  the  versatility  of  the  faculty,  a  production  of  genius 
is  a  piece  of  art  which,  wrought  up  to  its  full  effect  with 
a  felicity  of  manner  acquii-ed  by  taste  and  habit,  is 
merely  the  result  of  certain  arbitrary  combinations  of 
the  mind. 


296  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

Are  we  then  to  reduce  the  works  of  a  man  of  geniii?! 
to  a  mere  sport  of  his  talents — a  game  in  which  he  is 
only  the  best  player  ?  Can  he  whose  secret  power  raises 
so  many  emotions  in  our  breasts  be  without  any  in  his 
own?  A  mere  actor  performing  a  part ?  Is  he  unfeeling 
when  he  is  pathetic,  indifferent  when  he  is  indignant  ? 
Is  he  an  alien  to  all  the  wisdom  and  virtue  he  mspires  ? 
N'o !  were  men  of  genius  themselves  to  assert  this,  and 
it  is  said  some  incline  so  to  do,  there  is  a  more  certain  con- 
viction than  their  misconceptions,  in  our  own  conscious- 
ness, which  for  ever  assures  us,  that  deep  feelings  and  ele- 
vated thoughts  can  alone  spring  from  those  who  feel 
deeply  and  think  nobly. 

In  pi-oving  that  the  character  of  the  man  may  be  very 
opposite  to  that  of  his  writings,  we  must  recollect  that 
the  habits  of  the  life  may  be  contrary  to  the  habits  of 
the  mind.*  The  influence  of  their  studies  over  men  of 
genius  is  limited.  Out  of  the  ideal  world,  man  is  re- 
duced to  be  the  active  creature  of  sensation.  An  au- 
thor has,  in  truth,  two  distinct  characters :  the  literary, 
formed  by  the  habits  of  his  study ;  the  personal,  by  the 
habits  of  his  situation.  Gray,  cold,  eiFeminate,  and  timid 
•in  his  personal,  was  lofty  and  a"v\^ul  in  his  literary  char- 
acter. "We  see  men  of  polished  manners  and  bland  aflec- 
tions,  who,  in  grasping  a  pen,  are  thrusting  a  poniard ; 
while  others  in  domestic  life  with  the  simplicity  of  chil- 
dren and  the  feebleness  of  nervous  affections,  can  shake 
the  senate  or  the  bar  with  the  vehemence  of  their  elo- 
quence and  the  intrepidity  of  their  spirit.     The  writings 

*  Notbing  is  more  delightful  to  me  in  my  rosearches  on  the  literary 
character  than  when  I  find  in  persons  of  uuquestionable  and  liigh 
genius  tlio  results  of  my  own  discoveries.  This  circumstance  has  fre- 
quently happened  to  confirm  my  principles.  Long  after  tliis  was  pub- 
lialied,  Madame  de  Stacl  made  this  important  confession  in  her  recent 
work,  "Dix  Aunees  d'Exil,"  p.  154,  '*Je  ne  pouvais  me  dis.simuler 
(jue  je  n'otais  pa3  une  personne  couragouse ;  j'ai  do  la  hardiesse  dans 
Vimaginali'jn,  mais  do  la  limidite  dans  le  caradere." 


CONTRASTS,   PERSONAL  AND  LITERARY.  207 

of  the  famous  Baptists  Porta  are  marked  by  tlie  Loldncss 
of  his  geuius,  which  formed  a  singular  contrast  witli  the 
"pusillanimity  of  his  conduct  when  menaced  or  attacked. 
The  heart  may  be  feeble,  though  the  mind  is  strong.  To 
think  boldly  may  be  the  habit  of  the  mind,  to  act  weakly 
may  be  the  habit  of  the  constitution. 

However  the  personal  character  may  contrast  Avith 
that  of  their  genius,  still  are  the  works  themselves  gen- 
uine, and  exist  as  realities  for  us — and  were  so,  doubtless, 
to  the  composers  themselves  in  the  act  of  composition. 
In  the  calm  of  study,  a  beautiful  imagination  may  con- 
vert him  whose  morals  are  corrupt  into  an  admirable 
moralist,  awakening  feelings  which  yet  may  be  cold  in. 
the  business  of  life :  as  we  have  shown  that  the  phleg- 
matic can  excite  himself  into  wit,  and  the  cheerful  man 
delight  in  "  Night  Thoughts."  Sallust,  the  corrupt  Sal- 
lust,  might  retain  the  most  sublime  conceptions  of  the 
virtues  which  were  to  save  the  Republic ;  and  Sterne, 
whose  heart  was  not  so  susceptible  in  ordinary  occui*- 
rences,  while  he  was  gradually  creating  incident  after 
incident  and  touching  successive  emotions,  in  the  stories 
of  Le  Fevre  and  Maria,  might  have  thrilled — like  some  of 
his  readers.  Many  have  mourned  over  the  wisdom  or  the 
virtue  they  contemplated,  mortified  at  theii-  owii  infirmity. 
Thus,  though  there  may  be  no  identity  between  the  book 
-and  the  man,  still  for  us  an  author  is  ever  an  abstract 
being,  and,  as  one  of  the  Fathers  said — "A  dead  man 
may  sin  dead,  leaving  books  that  make  others  sin."  An 
author's  wisdom  or  his  folly  does  not  die  with  him.  The 
volume,  not  the  author,  is  our  companion,  and  is  for  us 
a  real  personage,  performing  before  us  whatever  it  in- 
spii'es — "  He  being  dead,  yet  speaketh."  Such  is  the 
vitality  of  a  book ! 


298  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 


CHAPTER    XXI. 

The  man  of  letters. — Occupies  an  intermediate  station  between  authors 
and  readers. — His  solitude  described. — Often  the  father  of  genius. — 
Atticus,  a  man  of  letters  of  antiquity. — The  perfect  character  of  a 
modern  man  of  letters  exhibited  in  Peiresc. — Their  utility  to  authors 
and  artists. 

AMONG  the  active  members  of  the  literary  republic, 
there  is  a  class  whom  formerly  we  distinguished  by 
the  title  of  Meist  of  Letters — a  title  which,  with  us,  has 
nearly  gone  out  of  currency,  though  I  do  not  think  that 
the  general  term  of  "  literary  men  "  would  be  sufficiently 
aj^propriate. 

The  man  of  letters,  whose  habits  and  Avhose  whole  life 
so  closely  resemble  those  of  an  author,  can  only  be  dis- 
tinguished by  this  simple  circumstance,  that  the  man  of 
letters  is  not  an  author. 

Yet  he  whose  sole  occupation  through  life  is  literature 
— he  who  is  always  acquiring  and  never  producing,  ap- 
pears as  ridiculous  as  the  architect  who  never  raised  an 
edifice,  or  the  statuary  who  refrains  from  sculpture.  His 
pursuits  are  reproached  with  terminating  in  an  epicurean 
selfishness,  and  amidst  his  incessant  avocations  he  him- 
self is  considered  as  a  particular  sort  of  idler. 

This  race  of  literary  characters,  as  we  now  find  them, 
could  not  have  appeared  till  the  press  had  poured  forth 
its  afiiuence.  In  the  degree  that  the  nations  of  Europe 
became  literary,  was  that  pliilosoi^hical  curiosity  kindled 
"which  induced  some  to  devote  their  fortunes  and  their 
days,  and  to  experience  some  of  the  purest  of  human 
enjoyments  in  preserving  and  familiarising  themselves 
with  "  the  monuments  of  vanished  minds,"  as  books  are 
called  by  D'Avenant  with  so  much  sublimity.  Their 
expansive  library  presents  an  indestructible  history  of 


MEN  OF  LETTERS.  299 

the  genius  of  every  people,  through  all  their  eras — and 
whatever  men  have  thought  and  whatever  men  have 
done,  were  at  length  discovered  in  books. 

Men  of  letters  occupy  an  intermediate  station  between 
authors  and  readers.  They  are  gifted  with  more  curi- 
osity of  knowledge,  and  more  multiplied  tastes,  and  by 
those  precious  collections  which  they  are  forming  during 
their  lives,  are  more  completely  furnished  with  the  means 
than  are  possessed  by  the  multitude  who  read,  and  the 
fcAV  who  write. 

The  studies  of  an  author  are  usually  restricted  to  par- 
ticular subjects.  His  tastes  are  tinctured  by  their  colour- 
ing, his  mind  is  always  shaping  itself  by  their  form.  An 
author's  works  form  his  solitary  pride,  and  his  secret 
power ;  while  half  his  life  wears  away  in  the  slow  matu- 
rity of  composition,  and  still  the  ambition  of  authorship 
torments  its  victim  alike  in  disappointment  or  in  posses- 
sion. 

But  soothing  is  the  solitude  of  the  Max  of  Letters  ! 
View  the  busied  inhabitant  of  the  libi'ary  surrounded  by 
the  objects  of  his  love  !  He  possesses  them — and  they 
possess  him !  These  volumes — images  of  our  mind  and 
passions  ! — as  he  traces  them  from  Herodotus  to  Gibbon, 
from  Homer  to  Shakspeare — those  portfolios  which  gather 
up  the  inventions  of  genius,  and  that  selected  cabinet  of 
medals  which  holds  so  many  unwritten  histories  ; — some 
favourite  sculptures  and  pictures,  and  some  antiquities 
of  all  nations,  here  and  there  about  his  house — these  are 
his  furniture ! 

In  his  unceasing  occupations  the  only  repose  he  re- 
quires, consists  not  in  quitting,  but  in  changing  them. 
Every  day  produces  its  discovery ;  every  day  in  the  life 
of  a  man  of  letters  may  furnish  a  multitude  of  emotions 
and  of  ideas.  For  him  there  is  a  silence  amidst  the 
world ;  and  in  the  scene  ever  opening  befoi-e  him,  all  that 
has  passed  is  acted  over  again,  and  all  that  is  to  come 


300  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

seems  revealed  as  in  a  vision.  Often  his  library  is  con- 
tiguous to  his  chamber,*  and  this  domain  '■'■  parva  sed 
apta^''  this  contracted  sj^ace,  has  often  marked  the  boun- 
dary of  the  existence  of  the  opulent  owner,  vrho  lives 
where  he  will  die,  contracting  his  days  into  hours ;  and  a 
whole  life  thus  passed  is  found  too  short  to  close  its  de- 
signs. Such  are  the  men  who  have  not  been  unhappily 
described  by  the  Hollanders  as  Uef-hehbers^  lovers  or  fan- 
ciers, and  their  collection  as  llef-hehhery^  things  of  their 
love.  The  Dutch  call  everything  for  which  they  are  im- 
passioned lief-hebhery ;  but  their  feeling  being  much 
stronger  than  their  delicacy,  they  apply  the  term  to  every 
thing,  from  poesy  and  picture  to  tulij^s  and  tobacco.  The 
term  wants  the  melody  of  the  languages  of  genius ;  but 
something  parallel  is  required  to  correct  that  indiscrimi- 
nate notion  which  most  persons  associate  with  that  of 
collectors. 

It  was  fancifully  said  of  one  of  these  lovers,  in  the  style 
of  the  age,  that,  "  His  book  was  his  bride,  and  his  study 
his  bride-chamber."  Many  have  voluntarily  relinquished 
a  public  station  and  their  rank  in  society,  neglecting  even 
their  fortune  and  their  health,  for  the  life  of  self-oblivion 

*  The  contiguity  of  the  cnAMBER  to  the  library  is  not  the  solitary 
fancy  of  an  individual,  but  marks  the  class.  Early  in  life,  when  in 
France  and  Holland,  I  met  with  several  of  these  amateurs,  who  had 
bounded  their  lives  by  the  circle  of  their  collections,  and  were  rarely 
seen  out  of  them.  The  late  Duke  of  Roxburgh  once  expressed  his  de- 
light to  a  literary  friend  of  mine,  tliat  he  had  only  to  stop  from  his 
eleoping  apartment  into  his  fine  library;  so  that  he  could  command,  at 
all  moments,  the  gratilication  of  pursuing  his  researches  while  he  in- 
dulged his  reveries.  The  Chevalier  Vorhulst,  of  Bruxelles,  of  whom  wo 
have  a  curious  portrait  prefixed  to  the  catalogue  of  his  pictures  and 
curiosities,  was  one  of  those  raon  of  letters  who  experienced  this  strong 
afibction  for  his  collections,  and  to  such  a  degree,  that  ho  never  went 
out  of  his  house  for  twenty  years ;  where,  however,  he  kept  up  a 
courteous  intercourse  with  the  lovers  of  art  and  literature.  Ho  was  an 
enthusiastic  votary  of  Rubens,  of  whom  he  has  written  a  copious  lifo 
in  Dutch,  the  only  work  he  appears -to  have  composed. 


BOOK  COLLECTORS.  301 

of  the  man  of  letters.  Count  De  Caylus  expended  a 
princely  income  in  the  study  and  the  encouragement  of 
Art.  He  passed  his  mornings  among  the  studios  of  art- 
ists, watching  their  progress,  increasing  his  collections, 
and  closing  his  day  in  the  retirement  of  his  own  cabinet. 
Ilis  rank  and  his  opulence  were  no  obstructions  to  his 
settled  habits.  Cicero  himself,  in  his  happier  moments, 
addressing  Atticus,  exclaimed — "  I  had  much  rather  be 
sitting  on  your  little  bench  under  Aristotle's  picture, 
than  in  the  curule  chairs  of  our  great  ones."  This  wish 
was  probably  sincere,  and  reminds  us  of  another  great 
politician  who  in  his  secession  from  public  affairs  retreated 
to  a  literary  life,  where  he  appears  suddenly  to  have  dis- 
covered a  new-found  world.  Fox's  favourite  line,  which 
he  often  repeated,  was — 

How  various  his  employments  ■whom  the  world 
Calls  idle  I 

De  Sacy,  one  of  the  Port-Royalists,  was  fond  of  repeat- 
ing this  lively  remark  of  a  man  of  wit — "  That  all  the 
mischief  in  the  world  comes  from  not  being  able  to  keep 
ourselves  quiet  in  our  room." 

But  tranquillity  is  essential  to  the  existence  of  the 
man  of  letters — an  unbroken  and  devotional  tranquillity. 
For  though,  unlike  the  author,  his  occupations  are  inter- 
rupted without  inconvenience,  and  resumed  without  effort ; 
yet  if  the  painful  realities  of  life  break  into  this  vision- 
ary world  of  literature  and  art,  there  is  an  atmosphere 
of  taste  about  him  which  will  be  dissolved,  and  har- 
monious ideas  which  will  be  chased  away,  as  it  happens 
when  something  is  violently  flung  among  the  trees  where 
the  birds  are  singing — all  instantly  disperse  ! 

Even  to  quit  their  collections  for  a  short  time  is  a  real 
suffering  to  these  lovers ;  everything  which  surrounds 
them  becomes  endeared  by  habit,  and  by  some  higher  as- 
sociations.    Men  of  letters  have  died  with  grief  from  hav- 


302  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

iiig  been  forcibly  deprived  of  the  use  of  their  libraries. 
De  Thou,  with  all  a  brother's  sympathy,  in  his  great  his- 
tory, has  recorded  the  sad  fates  of  several  who  had  wit- 
nessed their  collections  dispersed  in  the  civil  wars  of 
France,  or  had  otherwise  been  deprived  of  their  precious 
volumes.  Sir  Robert  Cotton  fell  ill,  and  betrayed,  in 
the  ashy  paleness  of  his  countenance,  the  misery  which 
killed  him  on  the  sequestration  of  his  collections.  "  They 
have  broken  my  heart  who  have  locked  up  my  library 
from  me,"  was  his  lament. 

If  this  passion  for  acquisition  and  enjoyment  be  so 
strong  and  exquisite,  what  wonder  that  these  "lovers" 
should  regard  all  things  as  valueless  in  comparison  with 
the  objects  of  their  love  ?  There  seem  to  be  spells 
in  their  collections,  and  in  their  fascination  they  have 
often  submitted  to  the  ruin  of  their  personal,  but  not  of 
their  internal  enjoyments.  They  have  scorned  to  bal- 
ance in  the  scales  the  treasures  of  literature  and  art, 
though  imperial  magnificence  once  was  ambitious  to  out- 
weigh them. 

Van  Praun,  a  friend  of  Albert  Durer's,  of  whom  we 
possess  a  catalogue  of  pictures  and  prints,  was  one  Qf 
these  enthusiasts  of  taste.  The  Emperor  of  Germany, 
probably  desirous  of  finding  a  royal  i*oad  to  a  rare  col- 
lection, sent  an  agent  to  procure  the  present  one  entire ; 
and  that  some  delicacy  might  be  observed  with  such  a 
man,  the  purchase  was  to  be  proposed  in  the  form  of  a 
mutual  exchange ;  the  emiseror  had  gold,  pearls,  and  dia- 
monds. Our  lief-hehher  having  silently  listened  to  the 
imperial  agent,  seemed  astonished  that  such  things  should 
be  considered  as  equivalents  for  a  collection  of  works  of 
art,  which  had  required  a  long  life  of  experience  and 
many  previous  studies  and  practised  tastes  to  have  form- 
ed, and  compared  with  which  gold,  pearls,  and  diamonds, 
afforded  but  a  mean,  an  unequal,  and  a  barbarous  barter. 

If  the  man  of  letters  bo  less  dependent  on  others  for 


BOOK  COLLECTORS.  303 

the  very  perception  of  his  o^n  existence  than  men  of 
the  world  are,  his  solitude,  however,  is  not  that  of  a  des- 
ert :  for  all  there  tends  to  keep  alive  those  concentrated 
feelings  which  cannot  be  indulged  with  security,  or  even 
without  ridicule  in  general  society.  Like  the  Lucullus 
of  Plutarch,  he  would  not  only  live  among  the  votaries 
of  literature,  but  would  live  for  them ;  he  throws  open 
his  library,  his  gallery,  and  his  cabinet,  to  all  the  Gre- 
cians. Such  men  are  the  fathers  of  genius  ;  they  seem  to 
possess  an  aptitude  in  discovering  those  minds  which  are 
clouded  over  by  the  obscurity  of  their  situations ;  and  it 
is  they  who  so  frequently  project  those  benevolent  insti- 
tutions, where  they  have  poured  out  the  philanthropy  of 
their  hearts  in  that  world  which  they  aj^pear  to  have  for- 
saken. If  Europe  be  literary,  to  whom  does  she  owe  this 
more  than  to  these  men  of  letters  ?  Is  it  not  to  their 
noble  passion  of  amassing  through  life  those  magnificent 
collections,  which  often  bear  the  names  of  their  founders 
from  the  gratitude  of  a  following  age  ?  Venice,  Flor- 
ence, and  Copenhagen,  Oxford,  and  London,  attest  the 
existence  of  theu*  labours.  Our  Bodleys  and  our  Har- 
leys,  our  Cottons  and  our  Sloanes,  our  Cracherodes,  our 
Townleys,  and  our  Banks,  were  of  this  race !  *  In  the 
perpetiiity  of  their  own  studies  they  felt  as  if  they  were 
extending  human  longevity,  by  throwing  an  unbroken 
light   of  knowledge   into  the   next   age.      The  private 

*  Sir  Thomas  Bodley,  in  1602,  first  brought  the  old  hbraries  at  Ox- 
ford into  order  for  the  benefit  of  students,  and  added  thereto  his  own 
noble  collection.  That  of  Robert  Harley,  Earl  of  Oxford  (died  1724), 
was  purchased  by  the  country,  and  is  now  in  the  British  Museum ;  and 
also  are  the  other  collections  named  above.  Sir  Robert  Cotton  died 
1631 ;  his  collection  is  remarkable  for  its  historic  documents  and  state- 
papers.  Sir  Hans  Sloane's  collections  may  be  said  to  be  the  foundation, 
of  the  Britisli  Museuuj,  and  were  purchased  by  Government  for  20,000Z. 
after  his  death,  in  1749.  Of  Cracherode  and  Townley  some  notice  will 
be  found  on  p.  2  of  the  present  volume.  Sir  Joseph  Banks  and  his  sister 
made  large  bequests  to  the  same  national  establishment. — Ed. 


304  LITERARY   CHARACTER, 

acquisitions  of  a  solitary  man  of  letters  during  half  a 
century  have  become  public  endowments.  A  generous 
enthusiasm  inspired  these  intrepid  labours,  and  their  vol- 
tary  privations  of  what  the  world  calls  its  pleasures 
and  its  honours,  would  form  an  interesting  history  not 
yet  written  ;  their  due,  yet  undischarged. 

But  "  men  of  the  world,"  as  they  are  emphatically  dis- 
tino^uished,  imagiiine  that  a  man  so  lifeless  in  "the  world" 
must  be  one  of  the  dead  in  it,  and,  with  mistaken  wit* 
would  inscribe  over  the  sepiilchre  of  his  library,  "  Here 
lies  the  body  of  our  friend."  If  the  man  of  letters  have 
voluntarily  quitted  their  "  world,"  at  least  he  has  passed 
into  another,  where  he  enjoys  a  sense  of  existence 
through  a  long  succession  of  ages,  and  where  Time,  who 
destroys  all  things  for  others,  for  him  only  preserves  and 
discovers.  This  world  is  best  described  by  one  who  has 
lingered  among  its  inspirations.  "  We  are  wafted  into 
other  times  and  strange  lands,  connecting  us  by  a  sad 
but  exalting  relationship  with  the  great  events  and 
great  minds  which  have  passed  away.  Our  studies  at 
once  cherish  and  control  the  imagination,  by  leading 
it  over  an  unbounded  range  of  the  noblest  scenes 
in  the  overawi;ig  company  of  departed  wisdom  and 
genius."  * 

Living  more  with  books  than  with  men,  which  is  often 
becoming  better  acquainted  with  man  himself,  though 
not  always  with  men,  the  man  of  letters  is  more  tolerant 
of  opinions  than  opinionists  are  among  themselves.  Nor 
are  his  views  of  human  affixirs  contracted  to  the  day,  like 
those  who,  in  the  heat  and  hurry  of  a  too  active  life,  pre- 
fer expedients  to  principles ;  men  who  deem  themselves 
politicians  because  they  are  not  moralists ;  to  whom  the 
ccntxiries  behind  have  conveyed  no  results,  and  who 
cannot  see  how  the  present  time  is  always  full  of  the 

*  "  Quarterly  Review,"  No.  ixxiii.,  p.  145. 


LTYING  WITH  BOOKS.  305 

future.  "Everything,"  says  the  lively  Burnet,  "must 
be  brought  to  the  nature  of  tinder  or  gunpowder,  ready 
for  a  spark  to  set  it  on  fire,"  before  they  discover  it. 
The  man  of  letters  indeed  is  accused  of  a  cold  indiffer- 
ence to  the  interests  which  divide  society ;  he  is  rarely 
observed  as  the  head  or  the  "  rump  of  a  party ;"  he 
views  at  a  distance  their  temporary  passions — those 
mighty  beginnings,  of  which  he  knows  the  miserable 
terminations. 

Antiquity  presents  the  character  of  a  perfect  man  of 
letters  in  Atticus,  who  retreated  from  a  political  to  a 
literary  life.  Had  his  letters  accomjDanied  those  of 
Cicero,  they  would  have  Olustrated  the  ideal  character 
of  his  class.  But  the  sage  Atticus  rejected  a  popular  ce- 
lebrity for  a  passion  not  less  powerful,  yielding  up  his 
whole  soul  to  study.  Cicero,  with  all  his  devotion  to 
literature,  was  at  the  same  time  agitated  by  another  kind 
of  glory,  and  the  most  perfect  author  in  Rome  imagined 
that  he  was  enlarging  his  honours  by  the  intrigues  of 
the  consulship.  He  has  distinctly  marked  the  character 
of  the  man  of  letters  in  the  person  of  his  friend  Atticus, 
for  which  he  has  expressed  his  respect,  although  he  could 
not  content  himself  with  its  imitation.  "  I  know,"  says 
this  man  of  genius  and  ambition,  "  I  know  the  greatness 
and  ingenuousness  of  your  soul,  nor  have  I  found  any 
difference  between  us,  but  in  a  different  choice  of  life ;  a 
certain  sort  of  ambition  has  led  me  earnestly  to  seek 
ifter  honours,  while  other  motives,  by  no  means  blame- 
able  induced  you  to  adopt  an  honourable  leisure; 
honestum  otmmy  *  These  motives  appear  in  the  in- 
teresting memoirs  of  this  man  of  letters ;  a  contempt  of 
political  intrigues  combined  with  a  desire  to  escape  from 
the  splendid  bustle  of  Rome  to  the  learned  leisure  of 
Athens.     He  wished  to  dismiss  a  pompous  train  of  slaves 


*  "Ad  Atticum,"  Lib.  i.,  Ep.  It 
20 


306  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

for  the  delight  of  assembling  under  his  roof  a  literary 
society  of  readers  and  transcribers.  And  having  col- 
lected under  that  roof  the  portraits  or  busts  of  the  illus- 
trious men  of  his  country,  inspired  by  their  spirit  and 
influenced  by  their  virtues  or  their  genius,  he  inscnbed 
under  them,  in  concise  verses,  the  characters  of  their 
mind.  Valuing  wealth  only  for  its  use,  a  dignified  econ- 
omy enabled  him  to  be  profuse,  and  a  moderate  expendi- 
ture allowed  him  to  be  generous. 

The  result  of  this  litei-ary  life  was  the  strong  affections 
of  the  Athenians.  At  the  first  opportunity  the  absence 
of  the  man  of  letters  ofiered,  they  raised  a  statue  to  him, 
conferring  on  our  Pomponius  the  fond  surname  of  Atti- 
cus.  To  have  received  a  name  from  the  voice  of  the  city 
they  inhabited  has  happened  to  more  than  one  man  of 
letters.  Pinelli,  born  a  Neapolitan,  but  residing  at 
Venice,  among  other  pecx;liar  honours  received  from  the 
senate,  was  there  distinguished  by  the  affectionate  title 
of  "  the  Venetian." 

Yet  such  a  character  as  Atticus  could  not  escape  cen- 
sure from  "  men  of  the  world."  They  want  the  heart 
and  the  imao-ination  to  conceive  somethings  better  than 
themselves.  The  happy  indifference,  perhaps  the  con- 
tempt of  our  Atticus  for  rival  factions,  they  have  stigma- 
tised as  a  cold  neutrality,  a  timid  pusillanimous  hypoc- 
risy. Yet  Atticus  could  not  have  been  a  mutual  friend, 
had  not  both  parties  alike  held  the  man  of  letters  as  a 
sacred  being  amidst  their  disguised  ambition ;  and  the 
urbanity  of  Atticus,  while  it  balanced  the  fierceness  of 
two  heroes,  Pompey  and  Csesar,  could  even  temper  the 
rivalry  of  genius  in  the  orators  ITortcnsius  and  Cicero. 
A  great  man  of  our  own  country  widely  differed  from 
the  accusers  of  Atticus.  Sir  Matthew  Hale  lived  in  dis- 
tracted times,  and  took  the  character  of  our  man  of  let- 
ters for  his  model,  adopting  two  principles  in  the  conduct 
of  the  Roman.     lie  engaged  himself  with  no  party  busi- 


MEN   OP   LETTERS.  307 

ness,  and  afforded  a  constant  relief  to  the  unfortunate,  of 
whatever  party.  He  was  thus  preserved  amidst  tt.e  con- 
tests of  the  times. 

If  the  personal  interest  of  the  man  of  letters  be  not 
deeply  involved  in  society,  his  individual  prosperity, 
however,  is  never  contrary  to  public  happiness.  Other 
professions  necessarily  exist  by  tlie  conflict  and  the  ca- 
lamities of  the  community :  the  politician  becomes  great 
by  hatching  an  intrigue;  the  lawyer,  in  counting  his 
briefs  ;  the  physician,  his  sick-list.  The  soldier  is  clam- 
orous for  war ;  the  merchant  riots  on  high  prices.  But 
the  man  of  letters  only  calls  for  peace  and  books,  to 
unite  himself  "svith  his  brothers  scattered  over  Europe ; 
and  his  usefulness  can  only  be  felt  at  those  intervals, 
when,  after  a  long  interchange  of  destruction,  men,  re- 
covering their  senses,  discover  that  "  knowledge  is  power." 
Burke,  whose  ample  mind  took  in  every  conception  of  the 
literary  character,  has  finely  touched  on  the  distinction 
between  this  order  of  contemplative  men,  and  the  other 
active  classes  of  society.  In  addressing  Mr.  Malone, 
whose  real  character  was  that  of  a  man  of  letters  who 
first  showed  us  the  neglected  state  of  our  literary  history, 
Burke  observed — for  I  shall  give  his  own  words,  always 
too  beautiful  to  alter — "  If  you  are  not  called  to  exert 
your  great  talents,  and  employ  your  great  acquisitions  in 
the  transitory  service  of  your  country,  which  is  done  in 
active  life,  you  will  continue  to  do  it  that  permanent  serv- 
ice which  it  receives  from  the  labours  of  those  who  know 
how  to  make  the  silence  of  closets  more  beneficial  to  the 
world  than  all  the  noise  and  bustle  of  courts,  senates,  and 
camps." 

A  moving  picture  of  the  literary  life  of  a  m;m  of  let- 
ters who  was  no  author,  Avould  have  been  lost  to  us,  had 
not  Peiresc  found  in  Gassendi  a  twin  spirit.  So  intimate 
was  the  biographer  with  the  very  thoughts,  so  closely 
united  in  the  same  pursuits,  and  so  perpetual  an  observer 


308  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

of  the  remarkable  man  whom  he  has  immortalised,  that 
when  employed  on  this  elaborate  resemblance  of  his 
friend,  he  was  only  painting  himself  with  all  the  identi- 
fying strokes  of  self-love.* 

It  was  in  the  vast  library  of  Pinelli,  the  founder  of  the 
most  magnificent  one  in  Europe,  that  Peiresc,  then  a 
youth,  felt  the  remote  hope  of  emulating  the  man  of  let- 
ters before  his  eyes.  His  life  was  not  without  prepara- 
tion, nor  without  fortunate  coincidences ;  but  there  was 
a  grandeur  of  design  in  the  execution  which  originated 
in  the  genius  of  the  man  himself. 

The  curious  genius  of  Peiresc  was  marked  by  its  pre- 
cocity, as  usually  are  strong  passions  in  strong  minds  ; 
this  intense  curiosity  was  the  germ  of  all  those  studies 
which  seemed  mature  in  his  youth.  He  early  resolved  on 
a  personal  intercourse  with  the  great  literary  characters 
of  Europe ;  and  his  friend  has  thrown  over  these  literary 
travels  that  charm  of  detail  by  which  we  accompany 
Peii'esc  into  the  libraries  of  the  learned ;  there  with  the 
historian  opening  new  sources  of  history,  or  with  the 
critic  correcting  manuscripts,  and  settling  points  of  eru- 
dition ;  or  by  the  opened  cabinet  of  the  antiquary,  de- 
ciphering obscure  inscriptions,  and  explaining  medals. 
In  the  gallei'ies  of  the  curious  in  art,  among  their  marbles, 
their  pictures,  and  their  prints,  Peiresc  has  often  revealed 
to  the  artist  some  secret  in  his  own  art.  In  the  museum 
of  the  naturalist,  or  the  garden  of  the  botanist,  there  was 
no  rarity  of  nature  on  which  he  had  not  something  to 
communicate.  His  mind  toiled  with  that  impatience  of 
knowledge,  that  becomes  a  pain  only  when  the  mind  is 
not  on  the  advance.     In  England  Peiresc  was  the  associate 

*  "  I  suppose,"  writes  Evelyn,  that  most  agreeable  enthusiast  of 
literature,  to  a  travelling  friend,  "  that  you  carry  the  life  of  that  in- 
comparable virtuoso  always  about  you  in  your  motions,  not  only  be- 
cause it  is  portable,  but  for  that  it  is  written  by  the  pen  of  the  groat 
Gassendds." 


PEIRESC.  309 

of  Camden  and  Selden,  and  had  more  than  one  intei-view 
•with,  that  friend  to  literary  men,  our  calumniated  James 
the  First.  One  may  judge  by  these  who  were  the  men 
whom  Peiresc  sought,  and  by  whom  he  himself  was  ever 
after  sought.  Such,  indeed,  were  immortal  friendships  ! 
Immortal  they  may  be  justly  called,  from  the  objects  in 
which  they  concerned  themselves,  and  from  the  permanent 
results  of  the  combined  studies  of  such  friends. 

Another  peculiar  greatness  in  this  literary  ^character 
was  Peiresc's  enlarged  devotion  to  literature  out  of  its 
purest  love  for  itself  alone.  He  made  his  own  universal 
curiosity  the  source  of  knowledge  to  other  men.  Con- 
sidering the  studious  as  forming  but  one  great  family 
wherever  they  were,  for  Peiresc  the  national  repositories 
of  knowledge  in  Europe  formed  but  one  collection  for  the 
world.  This  man  of  letters  had  possessed  himself  of 
their  contents,  that  he  might  have  manuscripts  collated, 
unedited  pieces  explored,  extracts  supplied,  and  even 
draughtsmen  employed  in  remote  parts  of  the  world,  to 
furnish  views  and  plans,  and  to  copy  antiquities  for  the 
student,  who  in  some  distant  retlfement  often  discovered 
that  the  literary  treasures  of  the  world  were  unfailingly 
opened  to  him  by  the  secret  devotion  of  this  man  of 
letters. 

Carrjang  on  the  same  grandeur  in  his  views,  his  uni- 
versal mind  busied  itself  in  every  part  of  the  habitable 
globe.  He  kept  up  a  noble  traffic  with  all  travellers,  sup- 
plying them  with  philosophical  instruments  and  recent 
inventions,  by  which  he  facilitated  their  discoveries,  and 
secured  their  reception  even  in  barbarous  realms.  In 
return  he  claimed,  at  his  own  cost,  for  he  was  "bom 
rather  to  give  than  to  receive,"  says  Gassendi,  fresh  im- 
portations of  Oriental  literature,  curious  antiquities,  or 
botanic  rarities ;  and  it  was  the  curiosity  of  Peiresc 
which  first  embellished  his  own  garden,  and  thence  the 
gardens  of  Europe,  with  a  rich  variety  of  exotic  flowers 


310  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

and  fruits.*  Whenever  presented  with  a  medal,  a  vase, 
or  a  manuscript,  he  never  slept  over  the  gift  till  he  had 
discovered  what  the  donor  delighted  in ;  and  a  book,  a 
picture,  a  plant,  when  money  could  not  be  offered,  fed 
their  mutual  passion,  and  sustained  the  general  cause  of 
science.  The  correspondence  of  Peiresc  branched  out  to 
the  farthest  bounds  of  Ethiopia,  connected  both  Ameri- 
cas, and  had  touched  the  newly-discovered  extremities 
of  the  universe,  when  this  intrepid  mind  closed  in  a 
premature  death. 

I  have  drawn  this  imperfect  view  of  Peiresc's  charac- 
ter, that  men  of  letters  may  be  reminded  of  the  capacity 
they  possess.  In  the  character  of  Peiresc,  however,  there 
still  remains  another  peculiar  feature.  His  fortune  was 
not  great ;  and  when  he  sometimes  endured  the  repwach 
of  those  whose  sordidness  was  startled  at  his  prodigality 
of  mind,  and  the  great  objects  which  w^ere  the  result, 
Peiresc  replied,  that  "  a  small  matter  suffices  for  the  nat- 
iiral  Avants  of  a  literary  man,  whose  true  wealth  consists 
in  the  monuments  of  arts,  the  treasures  of  his  library, 
and  the  brotherly  affections  of  the  ingenious."  Peiresc 
was  a  French  judge,  but  he  supported  his  rank  more  by 
his  own  character  than  by  luxury  or  parade.  He  would 
not  wear  silk,  and  no  taj)estry  hangings  ornamented  his 
apartments;  but  the  walls  were  covered  with  the  por- 
traits of  his  literary  friends ;  and  in  the  unadorned  sim- 
plicity of  his  study,  his  books,  his  papers,  and  his  letters 
were  scattered  about  him  on  the  tables,  the  seats,  and 
the  floor.  There,  stealing  from  the  world,  he  would 
sometimes  admit  to  his  spare  supper  his  friend  Gassendi, 
"  content,"  says  that  amiable  philosopher,  "  to  have  me 
for  his  guest." 

Peiresc,  like  Pinelli,  never  published  any  work.    These 

*  On  this  subject  soo  "Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  151 ;  and 
for  some  further  account  of  Peiresc  and  his  labours,  vol.  iii.,  p.  409,  of 
the  same  work. — Ed. 


CULTIVATORS  OF  KNOWLEDGE.  311 

men  of  letters  derived  their  pleasure,  and  perhaps  their 
pride,  from  those  vast  strata  of  knowledge  which  their 
curiosity  had  heaped  together  in  their  mighty  collections. 
They  either  were  not  endowed  with  that  faculty  of  genius 
which  strikes  out  aggregate  views,  or  were  destitute  of 
the  talent  of  composition  which  embellishes  minute  ones. 
This  deficiency  in  the  minds  of  such  men  may  be  attribu- 
ted to  a  thirst  of  learning,  which  the  very  means  to  allay 
can  only  inflame.  From  all  sides  they  ,are  gathering 
mformation ;  and  that  knowledge  seems  never  perfect 
to  which  every  day  brings  new  acquisitions.  With 
these  men,  to  compose  is  to  hesitate;  and  to  revise  is 
to  be  mortified  by  fresh  doubts  and  unsupplied  omissions. 
Peiresc  was  employed  all  his  life  on  a  history  of  Prov- 
ence ;  but,  observes  Gassendi,  "  He  could  not  mature  the 
bii'th  of  his  literary  ofispriug,  or  lick  it  into  any  shape  of 
elegant  form ;  he  was  therefore  content  to  take  the  mid- 
wife's part,  by  helping  the  happier  labours  of  others." 

Such  are  the  cultivators  of  knowledge,  who  are  rarely 
authors,  but  who  are  often,  however,  contributing  to  the 
works  of  others;  and  without  whose  secret  labours  the 
public  would  not  have  possessed  many  valued  ones. 
The  delightful  instruction  which  these  men  are  con- 
stantly ofiering  to  authors  and  to  artists,  flows  from 
their  silent  but  uninterrupted  cultivation  of  literature 
and  the  arts. 

When  Robertson,  after  his  successful  "History  of 
Scotland,"  was  long  irresolute  in  his  designs,  and  still 
unpractised  in  that  cui'ious  research  which  habitually 
occupies  these  men  of  letters,  his  admirers  had  nearly 
lost  his  popular  productions,  had  not  a  fortmmte  intro- 
duction to  Dr.  Birch  enabled  him  to  open  the  clasjjed 
books,  and  to  drink  of  the  scaled  fountains.  Robertson 
has  confessed  his  inadequate  knowledge,  and  his  over- 
flowing gratitude,  in  letters  which  I  have  elsewhere 
printed.     A  suggestion  by  a  man  of  letters  has  opened 


312  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

the  career  of  many  an  aspirant.  A  hint  from  Walsh 
conveyed  a  new  conception  of  English  poetry  to  one  of 
its  masters.  The  celebrated  treatise  of  Grotius  on  "  Peace 
and  War"  was  projected  by  Peiresc.  It  was  said  of 
Magliabechi,  who  knew  all  books,  and  never  wrote  one, 
that  by  his  diffusive  communications  he  was  in  some 
resj^ect  concerned  in  all  the  great  works  of  his  times.  Sir 
Robert  Cotton  greatly  assisted  Camden  and  Speed ;  and 
that  hermit  of  literatiire,  Baker  of  Cambridge,  was  ever 
supplying  with  his  invaluable  researches  Burnet,  Kennet, 
Hearne,  and  Middleton.  The  concealed  aid  which  men 
of  letters  afford  authors,  may  be  compared  to  those  sub- 
terraneous streams,  which,  flowing  into  spacious  lakes, 
are,  though  unobserved,  enlarging  the  waters  which 
attract  the  public  eye. 

Count  De  Caylus,  celebrated  for  his  collection,  and  for 
his  generous  patronage  of  artists,  has  given  the  last 
touches  to  this  picture  of  the  man  of  lettens,  with  all  the 
delicacy  and  wannth  of  a  self-painter. 

"  His  glory  is  confined  to  the  mere  power  which  he 
has  of  being  one  day  useful  to  letters  and  to  the  artf^ ;  for 
his  whole  life  is  employed  in  collecting  materials  of  which 
learned  men  and  artists  make  no  use  till  after  the  death 
of  him  who  amassed  them.  It  affords  him  a  very  sensi- 
ble pleasure  to  labour  in  hopes  of  being  useful  to  those 
who  pursue  the  same  course  of  studies,  while  there  are  so 
great  a  number  who  die  without  discharging  the  debt 
which  they  incur  to  society." 

Such  a  man  of  letters  appears  to  have  been  the  late 
Lord  Woodhouselee.  Mr.  Mackenzie,  returning  from 
his  lordship's  literaiy  retirement,  meeting  Mr.  Alison, 
finely  said,  that  "he  hoped  he  was  going  to  Woodhouse- 
lee ;  for  no  man  could  go  there  without  being  happier, 
or  return  from  it  without  being  better." 

Shall  we  then  hesitate  to  assert,  that  this  class  of  lit- 
erary men  forms  a  useful,  as  well  as  a  select  order  in 


OLD  AGE.  313 

society  ?  We  see  that  their  leisure  is  not  idleness,  that 
their  studies  are  not  unfruitful  for  the  public,  and  that 
their  opinions,  purified  from  passions  and  prejudices,  are 
always  the  soundest  Lti  the  nation.  They  are  counsellors 
vrhom  statesmen  may  consult ;  fathers  of  genius  to  whom 
authors  and  artists  may  look  for  aid,  and  friends  of  all 
nations ;  for  we  ourselves  have  witnessed,  during  a  war 
of  thirty  years,  that  the  men  of  letters  in  England  were 
still  united  with  their  brothers  in  France.  The  abode  of 
Sir  Joseph  Banks  was  ever  open  to  every  literary  and 
scientific  foreigner;  while  a  wish  expressed  or  a  com- 
munication written  by  this  man  of  letters,  was  even 
respected  by  a  political  power  which,  acknowledging  no 
other  rights,  paid  a  voluntary  tribute  to  the  claims  of 
science  and  the  privileges  of  literature. 


CHAPTER    XXII. 

Literary  old  age  still  learning. — Influence  of  late  studies  in  life. — Occu- 
pations in  advanced  age  of  the  literary  character. — Of  literary  men 
who  have  died  at  their  studies. 

THE  old  age  of  the  literary  character  retains  its  enjoy- 
ments, and  usually  its  powers — a  happiness  which 
accompanies  no  other.  The  old  age  of  coquetry  wit- 
nesses its  own  extinct  beauty ;  that  of  the  "  used "  idler 
is  left  without  a  sensation ;  that  of  the  grasping  Croesus 
exists  only  to  envy  his  heir;  and  that  of  the  Machiavel 
who  has  no  longer  a  voice  in  the  cabinet,  is  but  an  unhappy 
spirit  lingering  to  find  its  grave :  but  for  the  aged  man 
of  letters  memory  returns  to  her  stores,  and  imagination 
is  still  on  the  wing  amidst  fresh  discoveries  and  new 
designs.  The  others  fall  like  dry  leaves,  but  he  drops 
like  ripe  fruit,  and  is  valued  when  no  longer  on  the  tree. 


314:  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

The  constitutional  melancholy  of  Johnson  often  tinged 
his  views  of  human  life.  When  he  asserted  that  "  no 
man  adds  much  to  his  stock  of  knowledge,  or  imj^roves 
much  after  forty,"  his  theory  was  overturned  by  his  own 
experience ;  for  his  most  interesting  works  were  the 
productions  of  a  very  late  period  of  life,  formed  out  of 
the  fresh  knowledge  with  Avhich  he  had  then  furnished 
himself. 

The  intellectual  faculties,  the  latest  to  decline,  are  often 
vigorous  in  the  decreijitude  of  age.  The  curious  mind  is 
still  striking  out  into  new  pursuits,  and  the  mind  of 
genius  is  still  creating.  Ancora  impaeo  ! — "  Even  yet  I 
am  learning !"  was  the  concise  inscription  on  an  ingenious 
device  of  an  old  man  jilaced  in  a  child's  go-cart,  with  an 
hour-glass  iipon  it,  which,  it  is  said,  Michael  Angelo  ap- 
plied to  his  own  vast  genius  in  his  ninetieth  year.  Paint- 
ers have  improved  even  to  extreme  old  age :  West's  last 
woi'ks  were  his  best,  and  Titian  was  greatest  on  the  verge 
of  his  century.  Poussin  was  delighted  with  the  dis 
covery  of  this  circumstance  in  the  lives  of  painters.  "As 
I  grow  older,  I  feel  the  desire  of  surpassing  myself." 
And  it  was  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  that  with  the  finest 
poetical  invention,  he  painted  the  allegorical  pictures  of 
the  Seasons.  A  man  of  letters  in  his  sixtieth  year  once 
told  me,  "  It  is  but  of  late  years  that  I  have  learnt,  tlie 
riglit  use  of  books  and  the  art  of  reading." 

Time,  the  great  desti'oyer  of  other  men's  happiness, 
only  enlarges  the  patrimony  of  literature  to  its  possessor. 
A  learned  and  higlily  intellectual  friend  once  said  to  me, 
"  If  I  have  acquired  more  knowledge  these  last  four  years 
than  I  had  hitherto,  I  shall  add  materially  to  my  stores 
in  tlie  next  four  years ;  and  so  at  every  subsequent  period 
of  my  life,  should  I  acquire  only  in  the  same  proportion, 
the  general  mass  of  my  knowledge  will  greatly  accumu- 
late. If  we  are  not  deprived  by  nature  or  misfortune  of 
the   means  to  pursue   this    perpetual    augmentation  of 


OLD  AGE.  315 

knowledge,  I  do  not  see  but  we  may  be  still  fully  occu- 
pied  and  deeply  interested  even  to  the  last  day  of  our 
earthly  terra."  Such  is  the  delightful  thought  of  Owen 
Feltham  :  "  If  I  die  to-morrow,  my  life  will  be  somewhat 
the  sweeter  to-day  for  knowledge."  The  perfectibility 
of  the  human  mind,  the  animating  theory  of  the  eloquent 
De  Staol,  consists  in  the  mass  of  our  ideas,  to  which  every 
age  w^ill  now  add,  by  means  unknown  to  preceding  gen- 
erations. Imagination  was  born  at  once  perfect,  and  her 
arts  find  a  term  to  their  progress ;  but  there  is  no  boun- 
dary to  knowledge  nor  the  discovery  of  thought. 

How  beautiful  in  the  old  age  of  the  literary  character 
was  the  plan  which  a  friend  of  mine  pursued  !  His  mind, 
like  a  miiTor  whose  quicksilver  had  not  decayed,  reflected 
all  objects  to  the  last.  Full  of  learned  studies  and  ver- 
satile curiosity,  he  annually  projected  a  summer-tour  on 
the  Continent  to  some  remarkable  spot.  The  local  asso- 
ciations were  an  unfailing  source  of  agreeable  impressions 
to  a  mind  so  well  prepared,  and  he  presented  his  friends 
with  a  "  Voyage  Litteraire,"  as  a  new-year's  gift.  In 
such  pursuits,  where  life  is  "  rather  wearing  out  than 
rusting  out,"  as  Bishop  Cumberland  expressed  it,  scarcely 
shall  we  feel  those  continued  menaces  of  death  which 
shake  the  old  age  of  men  of  no  intellectual  pursuits,  who 
are  dying  so  many  years. 

Active  enjoyments  in  the  decline  of  life,  then,  consti- 
tute the  happiness  of  literary  men.  The  study  of  the 
arts  and  literature  spreads  a  sunshine  over  the  winter  of 
their  days.  In  the  solitude  and  the  night  of  human  life, 
they  discover  that  unregarded  kindness  of  nature,  which 
has  given  flowers  that  only  open  in  the  evening,  and  only 
bloom  through  the  night-season.  Necker  perceived  the 
influence  of  late  studies  in  life ;  for  he  tells  us,  that  "  the 
era  of  threescore  and  ten  is  an  agreeable  age  for  writuig ; 
your  mind  has  not  lost  its  vigour,  and  envy  leaves  you 
in  peace  " 


IIQ  LITERAEY  CHARACTER. 

The  opening  of  one  of  La  Mothe  le  Vayer's  Treatises 
.s  striking:  "I  should  but  ill  return  the  favours  God  has 
granted  me  in  the  eightieth  year  of  my  age,  should  I 
allow  myself  to  give  way  to  that  shameless  want  of  oc- 
cupation which  all  my  life  I  have  condemned  ;"  and  the 
old  man  proceeds  with  his  "  Observations  on  the  Compo- 
sition and  Reading  of  Books."  "  Tf  man  be  a  bubble 
of  air,  it  is  then  time  that  I  should  hasten  my  task ;  for 
my  eightieth  year  admonishes  me  to  get  my  baggage  to- 
gether ere  I  leave  the  world,"  wrote  Yarro,  in  opening 
his  curious  treatise  de  Re  JRiistica,  which  the  sage  lived 
to  finish,  and  which,  after  nearly  two  thousand  years,  the 
world  possesses.  "  My  works  are  many,  and  I  am  old  ; 
yet  I  still  can  fatigue  and  tire  myself  with  writing  more," 
says  Petrarch  in  his  "  Epistle  to  Posterity."  The  literary 
character  has  been  fully  occupied  in  the  eightieth  and  the 
ninetieth  year  of  life.  Isaac  Walton  still  glowed  while 
writing  some  of  the  most  interesting  biographies  in  his 
eighty-fifth  year,  and  in  the  ninetieth  enriched  the  poet- 
ical world  with  the  first  publication  of  a  romantic  tale  by 
Chalkhill,  "the  friend  of  Spenser."  Bodmer,  beyond 
eighty,  was  occuj)ied  on  Homer,  and  Wieland  on  Cicero's 
Letters.* 

But  the  delight  of  opening  a  new  pursuit,  or  a  new 
course  of  reading,  iraj^arts  the  vivacity  and  novelty  of 
youth  even  to  old  age.  The  revolutions  of  modern 
chemistry  kindled  the  curiosity  of  Dr.  Reid  to  his  latest 
days,  and  he  studied  by  various  means  to  prevent  the 
decay  of  his  faculties,  and  to  remedy  the  deficiencies  of 
one  failing  sense  by  the  increased  activity  of  another.  A 
late  popular  author,  when  advanced  in  life,  discovered,  in 
a  class  of  reading  to  which  he  had  never  been  accustomed, 
a  profuse  sujjply  of  fresh  furniture  for  his  mind.  This 
felicity  was  the  delightfulness  of  the  old  age  of  Goethe — • 

*  Soo  "Curiosities  of  Literature,"  on  "The  progress  of  old  age  in 
ne«"  studios." 


STUDIES  IN  ADVANCED  LIFE.  31 7 

literature,  art,  and  science,  formed  his  daily  inquiries ;  and 
this  venerable  genius,  prompt  to  receive  each  novel  im- 
pression, was  a  companion  for  the  youthful,  and  a  com- 
municator of  knowledge  even  for  the  most  curious. 

Even  the  steps  of  time  are  retraced,  and  we  resume 
the  possessions  we  seemed  to  have  lost ;  for  in  advanced 
life  a  return  to  our  early  studies  refreshes  and  renovates 
the  spirits :  we  open  the  poets  who  made  us  enthusiasts, 
and  the  philosophers  who  taught  us  to  think,  with  a  new 
source  of  feeling  acquired  by  our  own  experience.  Adam 
Smith  confessed  his  satisfaction  at  this  pleasure  to  Pro- 
fessor Dugald  Stewart,  while  "  he  was  reperusing,  with 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  student,  the  tragic  poets  of  ancient 
Greece,  and  Sophocles  and  Euripides  lay  open  on  his  table." 

Dans  ses  veines  toujours  un  jeune  san^  bouillone, 
Et  Sophocle  a  cent  ans  peint  encore  Antigone. 

The  calm  philosophic  Plume  found  that  death  could 
only  mten-upt  the  keen  pleasure  he  was  again  recei\'ing 
from  Lucian,  inspiring  at  the  moment  a  humorous  self- 
dialogue  with  Charon.  "  Happily,"  said  this  philosoi^her, 
"  on  retiring  from  the  world  I  found  my  taste  for  reading 
return,  even  with  greater  avidity."  We  find  Gibbon, 
after  the  close  of  his  History,  returning  with  an  appetite 
as  keen  to  "  a  full  repast  on  Homer  and  Aristophanes, 
and  involving  himself  in  the  philosophic  maze  of  the  writ- 
ings of  Plato."  Lord  Woodhouselee  found  the  recom- 
position  of  his  "  Lectures  on  History"  so  fascinating  in 
the  last  period  of  his  life,  that  Mr.  Alison  informs  us,  "  it 
rewarded  him  with  that  peculiar  delight,  which  has  been 
often  observed  in  the  later  years  of  literary  men ;  the  de- 
light of  returning  again  to  the  studies  of  their  youth,  and 
of  feeling  under  the  snows  of  age  the  cheerful  memories 
of  their  spring."  * 

♦  There  is  an  interesting  chapter  on  Favourite  Authors  in  "  Curi- 
osities of  Literature,"  vol.  iL,  to  which  the  reader  may  be  referred  for 
other  examples. — Ed 


318  LITERIRY   CHARACTER. 

Not  witlioiit  a  sense  of  exultation  has  the  literary  char- 
acter felt  this  peculiar  happiness,  in  the  unbroken  chain 
of  his  habits,  and  his  feelings.     Hobbes  exulted  that  he 
had  outlived  his  enemies,  and  was  still  the  same  Ilobbcs ; 
and  to  demonstratethereality  of  this  existence,  published, 
in  the  eighty-seventh  year  of  his  age,  his  version  of  the 
Odyssey,  and  the  following  year  his  Iliad.     Of  the  happy 
results  of  literary  habits  in  advanced  life,  the  Count  De 
Tressan,  the  elegant  abridger  of  the  old  French  romances, 
in  his  "  Literary  Advice  to  his  Children"  has  drawn  a 
most  pleasing  picture.     With  a  taste  for  study,  which  he 
found  rather  inconvenient  in  the  moveable  existence  of  a 
man  of  the  world,  and  a  military  wanderer,  he  had,  how- 
ever, contrived  to  reserve  an  hour  or  two  every  day  for 
literary  pursuits.     The  men  of  science,  with  whom  he 
had  chiefly  associated,  appear  to  have  turned  his  pas- 
sion to  obsei'vation  and  knowledge  rather  than  towards 
imagination  and  feeling ;  the  combination  fonned  a  wi*eath 
for  his   grey  hairs.     When   Count  De  Tressan   retired 
from   a   brilliant   to   an   affectionate   circle,   amidst  his 
family,  he  j)ursued  his  literary  tastes  with  the  vivacity 
of  a  young  author  inspired  by  the  illusion  of  fame.     At 
the  age  of  seventy-five,  with  the  imagination  of  a  poet,  he 
abridged,  he  translated,  he  recomposed  his  old  Chivalric 
Komanccs,  and  his  reanimated  fancy  sti-uck  fire  in  the 
veins  of  the  old  man.     Among  the  first  designs  of  his  re- 
tirement was  a  singular  philosophical  legacy  for  his  chil- 
dren.    It  was  a  view  of  the  history  and  progress  of  the 
hiunan  mind — of  its  2)vincip]es,  its  errors,  and  its  advan- 
tages, as  these  were  reflected  in  himself;  in  the  daAvnings 
of  Ills  taste,  and  the  secret  inclinations  of  his  mind,  which 
the  men  of  genius  of  tlie  age  witli  whom  he  associated 
had  developed.     Expatiating  on  their  memory,  he  calls 
on  his  children  to  witness  the  happiness  of  study,  so  evi- 
dent in  those  pleasures  which  were  soothing  and  adorn- 
ing his  old  age,     "  Without  knowledge,  witliout  litera- 


DEATHS  OF  LITERARY  MEIT.  319 

turc,"  exclaims  the  venerable  entliusiast,  "in  whatever 
rank  tto  are  born,  we  can  only  resemble  the  vulgar."  To 
the  centenary  Fontenelle  the  Count  De  Tressan  was 
cliiefly  indebted  for  the  happy  life  he  derived  from  the 
cultivation  of  literature ;  and  when  this  man  of  a  hundred 
years  died,  Tressan,  himself  on  the  borders  of  the  grave, 
would  offer  the  last  fruits  of  his  mind  in  an  eloge  to  his 
ancient  master.  It  was  the  voice  of  the  dpng  to  the 
dead,  a  last  moment  of  the  love  and  sensibility  of  genius, 
which  feeble  life  could  not  extinguish. 

The  genius  of  Cicero,  inspired  by  the  love  of  literature, 
has  thrown  something  delightful  over  this  latest  season 
of  life,  in  his  de  Senectxcte.  To  have  written  on  old  age, 
in  old  age,  is  to  have  obtained  a  triumph  over  Time.* 

YvHien  the  literary  character  shall  discover  himself  to 
be  like  a  stranger  in  a"  new  world,  when  all  that  he  loved 
has  not  life,  and  all  that  lives  has  no  love  for  old  age : 
when  his  ear  has  ceased  to  listen,  and  nature  has  locked 
up  the  man  within  himself,  he  may  still  expire  amidst  his 
busied  thoughts.  Such  aged  votaries,  like  the  old  bees, 
have  been  found  dying  in  their  honeycombs.  Let  them 
preserve  but  the  flame  alive  on  the  altar,  and  at  the  last 
moments  they  may  be  found  in  the  act  of  sacrifice  !  The 
■"Venerable  Bede,  the  instructor  of  his  genei'ation,  and  the 
historian  for  so  many  successive  ones,  expired  in  the  act 
of  dictating.  Such  was  the  fate  of  Petrarch,  who,  not 
long  before  his  death,  had  written  to  a  friend,  "  I  read, 
I  write,  I  think ;  such  is  my  life,  and  my  pleasures  as 
they  were  in  my  youth."  Peti-arch  was  found  lying  on 
a  folio  in  his  library,  from  which  volume  he  had  been 
busied  making  exti-acts  for  the  biography  of  his  country 
men.  His  domestics  having  often  observed  hira  studying 
in  that  reclining  posture  for  days  together,  it  was  long 

*  "Spurinna,  or  the  Comforts  of  Old  Age,"  by  the  late  Sir  Thomas 
Bernard,  was  written  a  year  or  two  before  he  died. 


320  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

before  they  discovered  that  the  poet  was  no  more.  The 
fate  of  Leibnitz  was  similar :  he  was  found  dead  with  the 
"  Argenis  "  of  Barclay  in  his  hand ;  he  had  been  study- 
ing the  style  of  that  political  romance  as  a  model  for  his 
intended  history  of  the  House  of  Brunswick.  The  liter- 
ary death  of  Barthelemy  aifords  a  remarkable  proof  of 
the  force  of  uninterrupted  habits  of  study.  He  had 
been  slightly  looking  over  the  newspaper,  when  suddenly 
he  called  for  a  Horace,  opened  the  volume,  and  found 
the  passage,  on  which  he  paused  for  a  moment ;  and 
then,  too  feeble  to  speak,  made  a  sign  to  bring  him 
Dacier's;  but  his  hands  were  already  cold,  the  Horace 
fell — and  the  classical  and  dying  man  of  letters  sunk 
into  a  fainting  fit,  from  which  he  never  recovered. 
Such,  too,  was  the  fate — perhaps  now  told  for  the  first 
time — of  the  great  Lord  Clarendon.  It  was  in  the  midst 
of  composition  that  his  pen  suddenly  di'opped  from  his 
hand  on  the  paper,  he  took  it  up  again,  and  again  it 
dropped :  deprived  of  the  sense  of  touch — his  hand  with- 
out motion — the  earl  perceived  himself  struck  by  palsy 
— and  the  life  of  the  noble  exile  closed  amidst  the 
warmth  of  a  literary  work  unfinished ! 


CHAPTER    XXIII. 

Universality  of  genius. — Limited  notion  of  genius  entertained  by  the 
ancients. — Opposite  faculties  act  with  dimiuiahed  force. — Men  of 
goniu3  excel  only  in  a  single  art. 

niHE  ancients  addicted  themselves  to  one  species  of 
JL  composition  ;  the  tragic  poet  appears  not  to  have 
entered  into  the  province  of  comedy,  nor,  as  far  as  we 
know,  were  their  historians  Avritcrs  of  verse.  Their 
artists  worked  on  the  same  princij)le ;  and  from  Pliny's 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  GENIUS.  821 

account  of  the  ancient  sculptors,  wo  may  infer  that  with 
them  the  true  glory  of  genius  consisted  in  carrying  to 
perfection  a  single  species  of  their  art.  They  did  not 
exercise  themselves  indifferently  on  all  subjects,  but  cul- 
tivated the  favourite  ones  which  they  had  chosen  from 
the  impulse  of  their  own  imagination.  The  hand  which 
■could  copy  nature  in  a  human  form,  with  the  characteris- 
tics of  the  age  and  the  sex,  and  the  occupations  of  life, 
refrained  from  attempting  the  colossal  and  ideal  majesty 
of  a  divinity ;  and  when  one  of  these  sculptors,  whose 
skill  was  pre-eminent  in  casting  animals,  had  exquisitely 
wrought  the  glowing  coursers  for  a  triumphal  car, 
he  requested  the  aid  of  Praxiteles  to  place  the 
driver  in  the  chariot,  that  his  work  might  not  be  dis- 
graced by  a  human  form  of  inferior  beauty  to  his 
animals.  Alluding  to  the  devotion  of  an  ancient  sculp- 
tor to  his  laboui-s,  Madame  de  Stael  has  finely  said, 
"  Tlie  history  of  his  life  was  the  history  of  his  statue." 

Such  was  the  limited  conception  which  the  ancients 
formed  of  genius.  They  confined  it  to  particular  objects 
or  departments  in  art.  But  there  is  a  tendency  among 
men  of  genius  to  ascribe  a  universality  of  power  to  a 
master-intellect.  Dry  den  imagined  that  Virgil  could  have 
written  satire  equally  with  Juvenal,  and  some  have  hard- 
ily defined  genius  as  "  a  power  to  accomplish  all  that  we 
undertake."  But  literary  history  will  detect  this  fallacy, 
and  the  failures  of  so  many  eminent  men  are  instructions 
from  Nature  which  must  not  be  lost  on  us. 

No  man  of  genius  put  forth  more  expansive  promises 
of  universal  power  than  Leibnitz.  Science,  imagination, 
history,  criticism,  fertilized  the  richest  of  human  soils ; 
yet  Leibnitz,  with  immense  powers  and  perpetual  knowl- 
edge, dissipated  them  in  the  multiplicity  of  his  pursuits. 
"The  first  of  philosophers,"  the  late  Professor  Playfair 
observed,  "has  left  nothing  in  the  immense  tract  of  his 
"  -t  which  can  be  distinguished  as  a  monument  of 
21 


S23  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

his  genius."  As  a  iiniversalist,  Voltaire  remains  un- 
paralleled in  ancient  or  in  modern  times.  This  volumin- 
ous idol  of  our  neighbours  stands  without  a  rival  in  liter- 
ature; but  an  exception,  even  if  this  were  one,  cannot 
overturn  a  fundamental  principle,  for  we  draw  our  con- 
clusions not  from  the  fortune  of  one  man  of  genius,  but 
from  the  fate  of  many.  The  real  claims  of  this  great 
writer  to  invention  and  originality  are  as  moderate  as 
his  size  and  his  variety  are  astonishing.  The  wonder  of 
Lis  ninety  vol  imes  is,  that  he  singly  consists  of  a  number 
of  men  of  the  second  order,  making  up  one  great  man ; 
for  unquestionably  some  could  rival  Voltaire  in  any 
single  province,  but  no  one  but  himself  has  possessed 
them  all.  Voltaire  discovered  a  new  art,  that  of  creat- 
ing a  supplement  to  the  genius  which  had  preceded  him  ; 
and  without  Corneille,  Racine,  and  Ariosto,  it  would  be 
difficult  to  conjecture  Avhat  sort  of  a  poet  Voltaire  could 
have  been.  He  was  master,  too,  of  a  secret  in  composi- 
tion, which  consisted  in  a  new  style  and  manner.  His 
style  promotes,  but  never  interrupts  thinking,  while  it 
renders  all  subjects  fimiliar  to  our  comprehension  :  his 
manner  consists  in  placing  objects  well  known  in  new 
combinations ;  he  ploughed  up  the  fallow  lands,  and 
renovated  the  worn-out  exhausted  soils.  Swift  defined  a 
good  style,  as  "  proper  words  in  proper  places."  Vol- 
taire's impulse  was  of  a  higher  flight,  "  proper  thoughts 
on  proper  subjects."  Swift's  idea  was  that  of  a  gramma- 
rian. Voltaire's  feeling  was  that  of  a  philosopher.  We 
are  only  considering  this  universal  writer  in  his  literary 
character,  which  has  fewer  claims  to  the  character  of  an. 
inventor  than  several  who  never  attained  to  his  celebrity. 
Are  the  original  powers  of  genius,  then,  limited  to  a 
single  art,  and  even  to  departments  in  that  art  ?  May 
not  men  of  genius  plume  themselves  with  the  vainglorj- 
of  universality?  I-et  us  dare  to  call  this  a  vainglory; 
for  he  who  stands  the  first  in  his  clar^s,  does  not  really  add 


SINGLENESS   OF   GENIUS.  323 

to  the  distiiictive  character  of  his  genius,  by  a  versatility 
"which,  however  apparently  successful  is  always  subordin- 
ate to  the  great  character  on  which  his  fame  rests.  It 
is  only  that  character  which  bears  the  raciness  of  the 
soil ;  it  is  only  that  impulse  whose  solitary  force  stamps 
the  authentic  work  of  genius.  To  execute  equally  well 
on  a  variety  of  subjects  may  raise  a  suspicion  of  the 
nature  of  the  executive  power.  Sliould  it  be  mimetic, 
the  ingenious  writer  may  remain  absolutely  destitute  of 
every  claim  to  genius.  Du  Clos  has  been  refused  the 
honours  of  genius  by  the  French  critics,  because  he 
wi'ote  equally  well  on  a  variety  of  subjects. 

I  know  that  this  principle  is  contested  by  some  of 
great  name,  who  have  themselves  evinced  a  wonderful 
variety  of  powers.  This  penurious  principle  flatters  not 
that  egotism  which  great  writers  share  in  common  Avith 
the  heroes  who  have  aimed  at  universal  emj^ire.  Besides, 
this  universality  maj^  answer  many  temporary  purposes. 
These  writers  may,  however,  observe  that  their  contem- 
poraries ai'e  continually  disputing  on  the  merits  of  their 
versatile  productions,  and  the  most  contrary  opinions  are 
even  formed  by  their  admirers ;  but  their  great  individ- 
ual character  standing  by  itself,  and  resembling  no  other, 
is  a  positive  excellence.  It  is  time  only,  who  is  influenced 
by  no  name,  and  will  never,  like  contemporaries,  mis- 
take the  true  work  of  genius. 

And  if  it  be  true  that  the  jirimary  qualities  of  the 
mind  are  ^o  dififerent  in  men  of  genius  as  to  render  them 
more  apt  for  one  class  than  for  another,  it  would  seem 
that  whenever  a  pre-eminent  faculty  had  shaped  the 
mind,  a  faculty  of  the  most  contrary  nature  must  act 
with  a  diminished  force,  and  the  other  often  with  an 
exclusive  one.  An  impassioned  and  pathetic  genius  has 
never  become  equally  eminent  as  a  comic  genius.  Rich- 
ardson and  Fielding  could  not  have  written  each  other''3 
works.     Could  Butler,  who  excelled  in  wit  and  satire, 


324  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

like  Milton  have  excelled  in  sentiment  and  imagination  ? 
Some  eminent  men  have  shown  remarkable  failures  in 
their  attemjDts  to  cultivate  opposite  dejiartments  in  their 
own  pursuits.  The  tragedies  and  the  comedies  of  Dry- 
den  equally  prove  that  he  was  not  blest  with  a  dramatic 
genius.  Gibber,  a  spirited  comic  writer,  was  noted  for 
the  most  degrading  failures  in  tragedy;'  while  Howe, 
successful  in  the  softer  tones  of  the  tragic  muse,  proved 
as  luckless  a  candidate  for  the  smiles  of  the  comic  as  the 
pathetic  Otway.  La  Fontaine,  unrivalled  humorist  as 
a  fabiilist,  found  his  opera  hissed,  and  his  romance 
utterly  tedious.  The  true  genius  of  Sterne  was  of  a  de- 
scriptive and  pathetic  cast,  and  his  humour  and  ribaldry 
were  a  perpetual  violation  of  his  natural  bent.  Alfiori's 
great  tragic  powers  could  not  strike  out  into  comedy  or 
"wit.  Scarron  declared  he  intended  to  write  a  tragedy. 
The  experiment  was  not  made ;  but  with  his  strong  cast 
of  mind  and  habitual  associations,  we  probably  have  lost 
a  new  sort  of  "  Roman  comique."  Cicero  failed  in  poetry, 
Addison  in  oratory,  Voltaire  in  comedy,  and  Johnson  in 
tragedy.  The  Anacreontic  poet  remains  only  Anacreon- 
tic in  his  epic.  With  the  fine  arts  the  same  occurrence 
has  happened.  It  has  been  observed  in  painting,  that 
the  school  eminent  for  design  was  deficient  in  colouring ; 
while  those  who  with  Titian's  warmth  could  make  the 
blood  circulate  in  the  flesh,  could  never  rival  the  ex-pres- 
sion  and  anatomy  of  even  the  middling  artists  of  the 
Roman  school. 

Even  among  those  rare  and  gifted  minds  which  have 
Rtartfcd  us  by  the  versatility  of  their  powers,  whence  do 
they  derive  the  high  character  of  their  genius?  Their 
durable  claims  are  substantiated  by  what  is  inherent  in 
themselves — what  is  individual — and  not  by  that  flexi- 
bility which  may  include  so  much  which  others  can  equal. 
We  rate  them  by  their  positive  originality,  not  by  their 
variety  of  powers.     When  we  think  of  Young,  it  is  only 


SINGLENESS   OF  GENIUS.  323 

of  his  "  Niglit  Thoughts,"  not  of  his  tragedies,  nor  his 
poems,  nor  even  of  his  satires,  which  others  have  rivalled 
or  excelled.  Of  Akenside,  the  solitary  work  of  genius  is 
his  great  poem ;  his  numerous  odes  are  not  of  a  higher 
order  than  those  of  other  ode-writers.  Had  Pope  only 
composed  odes  and  tragedies,  the  great  philosophical  poet, 
master  of  human  life  and  of  perfect  verse,  had  not  left  an 
undying  name.  Teniers,  unrivalled  in  the  walk  of  his 
genius,  degraded  history  by  the  meanness  of  his  concep- 
tions. Such  instances  abound,  and  demonstrate  an  im- 
portant truth  in  the  history  of  genius  that  we  cannot, 
however  we  may  incline,  enlarge  the  natural  extent  of 
our  genius,  any  more  than  we  can  "  add  a  cubit  to  our 
stature."  We  may  force  it  into  variations,  but  in  multi- 
plying mediocrity,  or  in  doing  what  others  can  do,  we 
add  nothing  to  genius. 

So  true  is  it  that  men  of  genius  appear  only  to  excel  in 
a  single  art,  or  even  in  a  single  department  of  art,  that 
it  is  usual  with  men  of  taste  to  resort  to  a  particular 
artist  for  a  particular  object.  Would  you  ornament  your 
house  by  interior  decorations,  to  whom  would  you  apply 
if  you  sought  the  perfection  of  art,  but  to  different  artists, 
of  very  distinct  characters  in  their  invention  and  their 
execution  ?  For  your  arabesques  you  would  call  in  the 
artist  whose  delicacy  of  touch  and  playfulness  of  ideas 
are  not  to  be  expected  from  the  grandeur  of  the  histori- 
cal painter,  or  the  sweetness  of  the  Paysagiste.  Is  it  not 
evident  that  men  of  genius  excel  only  in  one  depart- 
ment of  their  art,  and  that  whatever  they  do  with  the 
utmost  original  perfection,  cannot  be  equally  done  by  an- 
other man  of  genius?  He  whose  undeviating  genius 
guards  itself  in  its  own  true  sphere,  has  the  greatest 
chance  of  encountering  no  rival.  He  is  a  Dante,  a  Milton, 
a  Michael  Angelo,  a  Raphael :  his  hand  will  not  labour 
on  what  the  Italians  call  pasticcios  /  and  he  remains  not 
uuimitated  but  inimitable. 


S26  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 


CHAPTER    XXIV. 

literature  an  avenue  to  glory. — An  intellectual  nobility  not  chimerical, 
but  created  by  public  opinion. — Literary  honours  of  various  na^ 
tions. — ^Local  associations  with  the  memorj'^  of  the  man  of  genius. 

LITERATURE  is  an  avenue  to  glory,  ever  open  for 
those  ingenious  men  who  are  deprived  of  honours  or 
of  wealth.  Like  that  illustrious  Roman  who  owed  noth- 
ing to  his  ancestors,  videtur  ex  se  natus,  these  seem  self- 
born;  and  in  the  baptism  of  fame,  they  have  given  them- 
selves their  name.  Bruyere  has  finely  said  of  men  of 
genius,  "  These  men  have  neither  ancestors  nor  j^osterity ; 
they  alone  compose  their  whole  race." 

But  Akenside,  we  have  seen,  blushed  when  his  lame- 
ness reminded  him  of  the  fall  of  one  of  his  fathex-'s  cleav- 
ers ;  Prior,  the  son  of  a  vintner,  could  not  endure  to  be 
reminded,  though  by  his  favourite  Horace,  that  "  the 
cask  retains  its  flavour  ;"  like  Voiture,  another  descend- 
ant of  a  viarchand  de  vin,  whose  heart  sickened  over  that 
which  exhilarates  all  other  hearts,  whenever  his  opinion 
of  its  qiiality,  was  maliciously  consulted.  All  these  in- 
stances too  evidently  prove  that  genius  is  subject  to  the 
most  vulgar  infirmities. 

But  some  have  tliought  more  courageously.  TJie 
amiable  Rollin  was  the  son  of  a  cutler,  but  the  historian 
of  nations  never  felt  his  dignity  compromised  by  his 
birth.  Even  late  in  life,  he  ingeniously  alluded  to  his 
first  occupation,  for  we  find  an  epigram  of  his  in  sending 
a  knife  for  a  new-years's  gift,  "  informing  Iiis  friend,  that 
bhould  this  present  aj^j^ear  to  come  rather  from  Vulcan 
than  from  Minerva,  it  should  not  surprise,  foi-,"  adds  the 
epigrammatist,  "  it  was  from  the  cavern  of  the  Cyclops  I 
began  to  direct  my  footsteps  towards  Parnassus."  The 
great  political  negotiator,  Cardinal  D'Ossat,  was  elevated 


GENIUS  ELEYATE3  OBSCURE  MEN.  327 

by  Lis  genius  from  an  orphan  state  of  indigence,  and 
was  alike  destitute  of  ancestry,  of  titles,  even  of  parents. 
On  the  day  of  his  creation,  when  others  of  noble  extrac- 
tion assumed  new  titles  from  the  seignorial  names  of  their 
ancient  houses,  he  was  at  a  loss  to  fix  on  one.  Having 
asked  the  Pope  whether  he  should  choose  that  of  his 
bishopric,  his  holiness  requested  him  to  preserve  his  plain 
family  name,  which  he  had  rendered  famous  by  his  own 
genius.  The  sons  of  a  sword-maker,  a  potter,  and  a  tax- 
gatherer,  were  the  greatest  of  the  orators,  the  most  ma- 
jestic of  the  poets,  and  the  most  graceful  of  the  satirists 
of  antiquity ;  Demosthenes,  Virgil,  and  Horace.  The 
eloquent  Massillon,  the  brilliant  Flechier,  Rousseau,  and 
Diderot ;  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  and  Franklin,  arose  amidst 
the  most  humble  avocations. 

Vespasian  raised  a  statue  to  the  historian  Josephus, 
though  a  Jew ;  and  the  Athenians  one  to  ^sop,  though 
a  slave.  Even  among  great  military  republics  the  road 
to  public  honour  was  open,  not  alone  to  heroes  and 
patricians,  but  to  that  solitary  genius  which  derives  from 
itself  all  which  it  gives  to  the  public,  and  nothing  from 
its  birth  or  the  public  situation  it  occupies. 

It  is  the  prerogative  of  genius  to  elevate  obscure  men 
to  the  higher  class  of  society.  If  the  affluence  of  wealth 
in  the  present  day  has  created  a  new  aristocracy  of  its 
own,  where  they  already  begin  to  be  jealous  of  their 
ranks,  we  may  assert  that  genius  creates  a  sort  of  intel- 
lectual nobility,  which  is  now  conferred  by  public  feeling ; 
as  heretofore  the  surnames  of  "  the  African,"  and  of 
"  Coriolanus,"  won  by  valour,  associated  with  the  names 
of  the  conqueror  of  Africa  and  the  vanquisher  of  Corioli. 
"Were  men  of  genius,  as  such,  to  have  armorial  bearings, 
they  might  consist,  not  of  imaginary  things,  of  griffins 
and  chimeras,  but  of  deeds  performed  and  of  public 
works  in  existence.  When  Dondi  raised  the  great  astro- 
nomical clock  at  the  University  of  Padua,  which  was 


328  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

long  the  admiration  of  Europe,  it  gave  a  name  and 
nobility  to  its  maker  and  all  his  descendants.  There 
still  lives  a  Marquis  Dondi  dal'  Horologio.  Sir  Hugh 
Middleton,  in  memory  of  his  vast  enterprise,  changed 
his  former  arms  to  bear  three  piles,  to  perpetuate  the 
interesting  circumstance,  that  by  these  instruments  he 
had  strengthened  the  works  he  had  invented,  when  his 
genius  poured  forth  the  waters  through  our  metropolis, 
thereby  distinguishing  it  from  all  others  in  the  world. 
Should  not  Evelyn  have  inserted  an  oak-tree  in  his  bear- 
ings ?  for  his  "  Sylva "  occasioned  the  plantation  of 
"  many  millions  of  timber-trees,"  and  the  present  navy 
of  Great  Britain  has  been  constructed  Avith  the  oaks 
which  the  genius  of  Evelyn  j^lanted.  There  was  an 
eminent  Italian  musician,  who  had  a  piece  of  music  in- 
scribed on  his  tomb ;  and  I  have  heard  of  a  Dutch  mathe- 
matician, who  had  a  calculation  for  his  epitaph. 

We  who  were  reproached  for  a  coldness  in  our  national 
character,  have  caught  the  inspiration  and  enthusiasm 
for  the  works  and  the  celebrity  of  genius  ;  the  symptoms 
indeed  were  long  dubious.  Reynolds  wished  to  have 
one  of  his  own  pictures,  "  Contemplation  in  the  figure 
of  an  Angel,"  carried  at  his  funeral ;  a  custom  not  un- 
usual with  foreign  painters ;  but  it  was  not  deemed  pru- 
dent to  comply  with  this  last  wish  of  the  great  artist, 
from  the  fears  entertained  as  to  the  manner  in  which  a 
London  populace  might  have  received  such  a  novelty. 
This  shows  that  the  profound  feeling  of  art  is  still  con- 
fined within  a  circle  among  us,  of  which  hereafter  the 
t;ircumference  perpetually  enlarging,  may  embrace  even 
the  whole  people.  If  the  public  have  borrowed  the 
names  of  some  lords  to  dignify  a  "  Sandwich "  and  a 
"  Spencer,"  we  may  be  allowed  to  raise  into  titles  of  lit- 
erary nobility  those  distinctions  which  the  public  voice 
has  attached  to  some  authors ;  ^-EiicJi.ylus  Potter,  Athenian 
Stuart,  and  Anacreon  Moore.     Butler,  in  his  own  day, 


LITERARY  HONOURS.  329 

was  more  ^euei*ally  known  by  the  single  and  singular 
name  of  JIudibras,  than  by  his  own. 

This  intellectual  nobility  is  not  chimerical.  Such  titles 
must  be  found  indeed,  in  the  years  which  are  to  come ; 
yet  the  prelude  of  their  fame  distinguishes  these  men 
from  the  crowd.  Whenever  the  rightful  possessor  ap- 
pears, -wall  not  the  eyes  of  all  spectators  be  fixed  on  him  ? 
I  allude  to  scenes  which  I  have  witnessed.  Will  not 
even  literary  honours  sui)eradd  a  nobility  to  nobility ; 
and  make  a  name  instantly  recognised  which  might 
otherwise  be  hidden  under  its  rank,  and  remain  unknown 
by  its  title  ?  Our  illustrious  list  of  literary  noblemen  is 
far  more  glorious  than  the  satirical  "  Catalogue  of  Noble 
Authors,"  drawn  up  by  a  polished  and  heartless  cynic, 
who  has  pointed  his  brilliant  shafts  at  all  who  were  chival- 
rous in  spirit,  or  related  to  the  family  of  genius.  One  may 
presume  on  the  existence  of  this  intellectual  nobility, 
from  the  extraordinary  cu'cumstance  that  the  great  have 
actually  felt  a  jealousy  of  the  literary  rank.  But  no 
rivalry  can  exist  in  the  solitary  honour  conferred  on  an 
author.  It  is  not  an  honour  derived  from  birth  nor  crea- 
tion, but  from  public  opinion,  and  inseparable  from  his 
name,  as  an  essential  quality;  for  the  diamond  wdll 
sparkle  and  the  rose  will  be  fragrant,  otherwise  it  is  no 
diamond  or  rose.  The  great  may  well  condescend  to  be 
humble  to  genius,  si  ace  genius  pays  its  homage  in  be- 
coming proud  of  that  humility.  Cardinal  Richelieu  was 
mortified  at  the  celebrity  of  the  unbending  Corneille ;  so 
were  several  noblemen  at  Pope's  indifierence  to  their 
rank ;  and  Magliabechi,  the  book  prodigy  of  his  age, 
whom  every  literary  stranger  visited  at  Florence,  assured 
Lord  Raley  that  the  Duke  of  Tuscany  had  become  jeal- 
ous of  the  attention  he  was  receiving  from  foreigners,  as 
they  usually  went  to  visit  Magliabechi  before  the  Grand 
Dnke. 

A  confession  by  Montesquieu  states,  with  open  can- 


830  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

dour,  a  fact  in  his  life  which  confirms  this  jealousy  of  the 
great  with  the  literary  character.  "  On  my  entering  into 
life  I  was  spoken  of  as  a  man  of  talents,  and  people  of 
condition  gave  me  a  favourable  reception ;  but  when  the 
success  of  ray  Persian  Letters  proved  perhaps  that  I  was 
not  unworthy  of  my  reputation,  and  the  public  began  to 
esteem  me,  my  reception  with  the  great  was  discou7'agingy 
and  I  experienced  innwnerahle  mortifications.'*^  Montes- 
quieu subjoins  a  reflection  siiiBLciently  humiliating  for  the 
mere  nobleman:  "The  great,  inwardly  wounded  with 
the  glory  of  a  celebrated  name,  seek  to  humble  it.  In 
general  he  only  can  patiently  endure  the  fame  of  others, 
who  deserves  fame  himself."  This  sort  of  jealousy  un- 
questionably prevailed  in  the  late  Lord  Orford,  a  wit,  a 
man  of  the  world,  and  a  man  of  rank ;  but  while  he  con- 
sidered literature  as  a  mere  amusement,  he  was  mortified 
at  not  obtaining  literary  celebrity ;  he  felt  his  authorial 
always  beneath  his  personal  character.  It  fell  to  my  lot 
to  develope  his  real  feelings  respecting  himself  and  the 
literary  men  of  his  age.* 

Who  was  the  dignified  character.  Lord  Chesterfield  or 
Samuel  Johnson,  when  the  great  author,  proud  of  his 
protracted  and  vast  labour,  rejected  his  lordsliip's  tardy 
and  trivial  patronage  ?  f     "I  value  myself,"  says  Swift, 

*  "Calamities  of  Atithors."  I  printed,  iu  1812,  extracts  from  "Wal- 
polo's  correspondence  with  Cole.  Some  have  considered  that  there 
was  a  severitj'-  of  delineation  in  my  character  of  Horace  Walpole.  I 
was  the  first,  in  my  impartial  view  of  his  literary  character,  to  pro- 
claim to  the  world  whit  it  has  now  fully  sanctioned,  that  "  His  most 
pleasing,  if  not  his  great  talent,  lay  in  letter-writing ;  here  he  was 
without  a  rival.  His  correspondence  aboimded  with  literature,  criti- 
cism, and  wit  of  the  most  original  and  brilliant  composition."  This 
was  ])ublished  several  years  before  the  recent  collection  of  his  letters. 

\  Johnson  had  originally  submitted  the  plan  of  his  "Dictionary" 
to  Lord  Chesterfield,  but  received  no  mark  of  interest  or  sympathy 
during  its  weary  progress;  when  the  moment  of  jniblication  approached, 
his  lordship,  perhaps  in  the  hope  of  earning  a  dedication,  published  in 
Ttui  Wvrld  two  letters  commending  Johnson  and  his  labours.     It  was 


INTELLECTUAL  NOBILITY.  33 1 

"  upon  making  the  ministry  desii*e  to  be  acquainted  with 
Parnell,  and  not  Parnell  with  the  ministry."  Piron 
would  not  suffer  the  literary  character  to  be  lowered  in 
his  presence.  Entering  the  apartment  of  a  nobleman, 
who  was  conducting  another  peer  to  the  stairs-head,  the 
latter  stopped  to  make  way  for  Piron :  "  Pass  on,  my 
lord,"  said  the  noble  master;  "pass,  he  is  only  a  poet." 
Piron  replied,  "  Since  our  qualities  are  declared,  I  shall 
take  my  rank,"  and  placed  himself  before  the  lord.  Nor 
is  this  pride,  the  true  soui-ce  of  elevated  character,  re- 
fused to  the  great  artist  as  well  as  the  great  author. 
Michael  Angelo,  invited  by  Julius  II.  to  the  court  of 
Rome,  found  that  intrigue  had  indisposed  his  holiness 
towards  him,  and  more  than  once  the  great  artist  was 
suffered  to  linger  in  attendance  in  the  antechamber. 
One  day  the  indignant  man  of  genius  exclaimed,  "  Tell 
his  holiness,  if  he  wants  me,  he  must  look  for  me  else- 
where." He  flew  back  to  his  beloved  Florence,  to  pro- 
ceed with  that  celebrated  cartoon  which  afterwards  be- 
came a  favourite  study  with  all  artists.  Thrice  the  Pope 
wrote  for  his  return,  and  at  length  menaced  the  little 
State  of  Tuscany  with  war,  if  Michael  Angelo  j^rolonged 
his  absence.  He  returned.  The  sublime  artist  knelt  at 
the  foot  of  the  Father  of  the  Church,  turning  aside  his 
troubled  countenance  in  silence.  An  intermeddling 
bishop  offered  himself  as  a  mediator,  apologising  for  our 
artist  by  observing,  "  Of  this  proud  humour  are  these 
painters  made  !"  Julius  turned  to  this  pitiable  mediator, 
and,  as  Vasari  tells,  used  a  switch  on  this  occasion,  ob- 


this  notice  tlaat  produced  Johnson's  celebrated  letter,  in  which  lie 
asks, — "  Is  not  a  patron,  my  lord,  one  who  looks  with  unconcern  on  a 
man  struggling  for  hfe  in  the  water,  and  when  he  has  reached  ground 
encumbers  him  with  help?  The  notice  you  have  been  pleased  to  take 
of  my  labours,  had  it  been  early  had  been  kind,  but  it  has  been  de- 
layed till  I  am  indifferent  and  cannot  enjoy  it ;  till  I  am  solitary,  and 
cannot  impart  it ;  till  I  am  known,  and  do  not  want  it." — Ed. 


332  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

serving,  "You  speak  injuriously  of  him,  while  I  am 
sileut.  It  is  you  who  are  ignorant."  Raising  Michael 
Angelo,  Julius  II.  embraced  the  man  of  genius. 

"I  can  make  lords  of  you  every  daj^,  but  I  cannot 
create  a  Titian,"  said  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  to  his  court- 
iers, who  had  become  jealous  of  the  hours  and  the  half- 
hours  which  the  monarch  stole  from  them  that  he  might 
converse  with  the  man  of  genius  at  his  work.  There  is 
an  elevated  intercourse  between  pjower  and  genius ;  and 
if  they  are  deficient  in  reciprocal  esteem,  neither  are 
great.  The  intellectual  nobility  seems  to  have  been  as- 
serted by  De  Harlay,  a  great  French  statesman ;  for 
when  the  Academy  was  once  not  received  with  royal 
honours,  he  complained  to  the  French  monarch,  observ- 
ing, that  when  "  a  man  of  letters  was  presented  to 
Francis  I.  for  the  first  time,  the  king  always  advanced 
three  steps  from  the  throne  to  receive  him."  It  is  some- 
thing more  than  an  ingenious  thought,  when  Fontenelle, 
in  his  eloge  on  Leibnitz,  alluding  to  the  death  of  Queen 
Anne,  adds  of  her  succcL^or,  that  "  The  Elector  of  Han- 
over united  under  his  dominion  an  electorate,  the  three 
kinjrdoms  of  Great  Britain,  and  Leibnitz  and  Newton."* 

If  ever  the  voice  of  individuals  can  recompense  a  life 
of  literary  labour,  it  is  in  speaking  a  foreign  accent. 
This  sounds  like  the  distant  plaudit  of  posterity.  The 
distance  of  space  between  the  literary  character  and  the 
inquirer,  in  some  respects  represents  the  distance  of  time 
which  separates  the  author  from  the  next  age.  Fon- 
tenelle was  never  more  gratified  tlian  when  a  Swede,  ar- 
riving at  the  gates  of  Paris,  inquired  of  the  custom-house 

*  This  greatness  of  intellect  that  glorifies  a  court,  however  small,  is 
well  instanced  in  that  at  Weimar,  where  the  Duke  Frederic  surrounded 
himself  with  the  first  men  in  Germany.  It  was  the  ciioson  residence  and 
burial-place  of  Herder ;  the  birth-place  of  Kotzobue.  Here  also  "Wieland 
resided  for  many  years  ;  and  in  the  vaults  of  the  ducal  chapel  the  ashes 
of  Schiller  repose  by  those  of  Goethe,  who  for  more  than  half  a  century 
assisted  iu  the  councils,  and  adorned  the  court  of  Weimar. — Bd. 


HOXOUR  TO   GENIUS.  333 

officers  where  Fontenelle  resided,  and  expressed  his  in- 
dignation that  not  one  of  them  had  ever  heard  of  his 
name.  Hobbes  expresses  his  proxid  delight  that  his  por- 
trait was  sought  after  by  foreigners,  and  that  the  Great 
Duke  of  Tuscany  made  the  philosopher  the  object  of  his 
first  inquiries.  Camden  was  not  insensible  to  the  visits 
of  German  noblemen,  who  were  desirous  of  seeing  the 
British  Pliny;  and  Pocock,  while  he  received  no  aid 
from  patronage  at  home  for  his  Oriental  studies,  never 
relaxed  in  those  unrequited  labours,  animated  by  the 
learned  foreigners,  who  hastened  to  see  and  converse  with 
this  prodigy  of  Eastern  leai'ning. 

Yes !  to  the  very  presence  of  the  man  of  genius  -will 
the  world  spontaneousl}%pay  their  tribute  of  respect,  of 
admiration,  or  of  love.  Many  a  pilgrimage  has  he  lived 
to  receive,  and  many  a  crowd  has  followed  his  footsteps  ! 
There  are  days  in  the  life  of  genius  which  repay  its  suffer- 
ings. Demosthenes  confessed  he  was  pleased  when  even 
a  fishwoman  of  Athens  pointed  him  out.  Corneille  had 
his  particular  seat  in  the  theatre,  and  the  audience  would 
rise  to  salute  him  when  he  entered.  At  the  presence  of 
Kaynal  in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  Speaker  was  re- 
quested to  suspend  the  debate  till  that  illustrious  for- 
eigner, who  had  written  on  the  English  parliament,  was 
accommodated  with  a  seat.  Spinosa,  when  he  gained  an 
humble  livelihood  by  grinduig  optical  glasses,  at  an  ob- 
scure village  in  Holland,  was  visited  by  the  first  general 
in  Europe,  who,  for  the  sake  of  this  philosophical  con- 
ference, suspended  the  march  of  the  army. 

In  all  ages  and  in  all  countries  has  this  feeling  been 
created.  It  is  neither  a  temporary  ebullition  nor  an  in- 
dividual honour.  It  comes  out  of  the  heart  of  man.  It 
is  the  passion  of  great  souls.  In  Spain,  whatever  was 
most  beautiful  in  its  kind  was  described  by  the  name  of 
the  great  Spanish  bard  :*  everything  excellent  was  called 

*  Lope  de  Vega. 


334:  LITERARY   CEIARACTER. 

a  Lcpe.  Italy  would  furnish  a  volume  of  the  puhlic 
honours  decreed  to  literary  men ;  nor  is  that  spirit  ex- 
tinct, though  the  national  character  has  fallen  by  the 
chance  of  fortune.  Metastasio  and  Tii-aboschi  received 
what  had  been  accorded  to  Petrarch  and  to  Poggio. 
Germany,  patriotic  to  its  literary  characters,  is  the  land 
of  the  enthusiasm  of  genius.  On  the  borders  of  the  Lin- 
net, in  the  public  walk  of  Zurich,  the  monument  of  Ges- 
ner,  erected  by  the  votes'  of  his  fellow-citizens,  attests 
their  sensibility;  and  a  solemn  funeral  honoured  the  re- 
mains of  Klopstock,  led  by  the  senate  of  Hamburgh, 
with  fifty  thousand  votaries,  so  penetrated  by  one  uni- 
versal sentiment,  that  this  multitude  preserved  a  mourn- 
ful silence,  and  the  interference  *f  the  police  ceased  to  be 
necessary  through  the  city  at  the  solemn  burial  of  the 
man  of  genius.  Has  even  Holland  proved  insensible  ? 
The  statue  of  Erasmus,  in  Rotterdam,  still  animates  her 
young  students,  and  offers  a  noble  example  to  her  neigh- 
bours of  the  influence  even  of  the  sight  of  the  statue  of 
a  man  of  genius.  Travellers  never  fail  to  mention  Eras- 
mus when  Basle  occupies  their  recollections;  so  that,  as 
Bayle  observes,  "He  has  rendered  the  place  of  his 
death  as  celebrated  as  that  of  his  birth,"  In  France, 
since  Francis  I.  created  genius,  and  Louis  XIV.  protected 
it,  the  impulse  has  been  communicated  to  the  French  peo- 
ple. There  the  statues  of  their  illustrious  men  spread 
inspiration  on  the  spots  which  living  they  would  have 
haunted : — in  their  theatres,  the  great  dramatists ;  in  their 
Institute  their  illustrious  authors ;  in  their  public  edifices, 
congenial  men  of  genius.*     This  is  worthy  of  the  coun- 

*"We  cannot  bury  tlie  fame  of  our  English  worthies — that  exists  be- 
fore us,  independent  of  ourselves;  but  we  bury  the  influence  of  their  in- 
spiring presence  in  those  immortal  memorials  of  genius  easy  to  bo  read 
by  all  men — thoir  statues  and  their  busts,  consigning  them  to  spots 
seldom  visited,  and  often  too  obscure  to  bo  viewed.  [We  liavo  recent 
evidence  of  a  more  noblo  acknowledi^uient  of  our  great  men.     The 


I 


SOXOURS   TO   CtEXIUS.  335 

try  which  privileged  the  family  of  La  Fontaine  to  be  foi 
ever  exempt  from  taxes,  and  decreed  that  "  the  produc- 
tions of  the  mind  vrere  not  seizable,"  when  the  creditors 
of  Crebillon  would  have  attached  the  produce  of  his 
tragedies. 

These  distinctive  honours  accorded  to  genius  were  in 
unison  with  their  decree  i*especting  the  will  of  Bayle.  It 
was  the  subject  of  a  lawsuit  between  the  heir  of  the  will 
and  the  inheritor  by  blood.  The  latter  contested  that 
this  great  literary  character,  being  a  fugitive  for  religion, 
and  dying  in  a  proscribed  country,  was  divested  by  law 
of  the  power  to  dispose  of  his  property,  and  that  our  au- 
thor, when  resident  in  Holland,  in  a  civil  sense  was  dead. 
In  the  Parliament  of  Toulouse  the  judge  decided  that 
learned  men  are  free  in  all  countries :  that  he  who  had 
sought  in  a  foreign  land  an  asylum  from  his  love  of  let- 
ters, was  no  fugitive  ;  that  it  was  unworthy  of  Finance  to 
treat  as  a  stranger  a  son  in  whom  she  gloried,  and  he 
protested  against  the  notion  of  a  civil  death  to  such  a 
man  as  Bayle,  whose  name  was  living  throughout  Europe. 
This  judicial  decision  in  France  was  in  unison  with  that 
of  the  senate  of  Rotterdam,  who  declared  of  the  emigrant 
Bayle,  that  "  such  a  man  should  not  be  considered  as  a 
foreigner." 

Even  the  most  common  objects  are  consecrated  when 
associated  with  the  memory  of  the  man  of  genius.  "We 
Btill  seek  for  his  tomb  on  the  spot  where  it  has  vanished. 
The  enthusiasts  of  genius  still  wander  on  the  hills  of  Pau- 
silippo,  and  muse  on  Virgil  to  retrace  his  landscape.  There 
is  a  gi'ove  at  Magdalen  College  which  retains  the  name  of 
Addison's  walk,  where  still  the  student  will  linger ;  and 
there  is  a  cave  at  Macao,  which  is  still  visited  by  the 
Portuguese  from  a  national  feeling,  for  Camoens  there 

Btatue  of  Dr.  Jenner  is  placed  in  Trafalgar  Square ;  and  Grantham 
has  now  a  noble  work  to  commemorate  its  great  townsman,  Sir  Isaac 
Newton.] 


336  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

passed  many  days  in  composing  his  Lusiad.  When  Pe- 
trarch was  passing  by  his  native  town,  he  was  received 
with  the  honours  of  his  fame ;  but  when  the  heads  of  the 
town  conducted  Petrarch  to  the  house  where  the  poet 
was  born,  and  infoi-med  him  that  the  pi'oprietor  had  often 
wished  to  make  alterations,  but  that  the  townspeople  had 
risen  to  insist  that  the  house  which  was  consecrated  by 
the  birth  of  Petrarch  should  be  preserved  unchanged  ; 
this  was  a  triumph  more  affecting  to  Petrarch  than  his 
coronation  at  Rome.* 

In  the  village  of  Certaldo  is  still  shown  the  house  of 
Boccaccio ;  and  on  a  turret  are  seen  the  arms  of  the  Me- 
dici, which  they  had  sculptured  there,  with  an  inscription 
alluding  to  a  small  house  and  a  name  which  filled  the 
world ;  and  in  Ferrara,  the  small  house  which  Ariosto 
built  was  purchased,  to  be  preserved,  by  the  municipality, 
and  there  they  still  show  the  poet's  study ;  and  under  his 
bust  a  simple  but  affecting  tribute  to  genius  records  that 
"  Ludovico  Ariosto  in  this  aj^artment  wrote."  Two  hun- 
dred and  eighty  years  after  the  death  of  the  divine  poet 
it  was  purchased  by  the  podesta.,  with  the  money  of  the 
commune,  that  "the  public  veneration  may  be  main- 
tained." f  "  Foreigners,"  says  Anthony  Wood  of  Milton, 
"  have,  out  of  piire  devotion,  gone  to  Bread-street  to  see 
the  house  and  chamber  where  he  was  born  ;"  and  at  Paris 

*  On  this  passage  I  And  a  remarkable  manuscript  note  by  Lord 
Byron  : — "  It  would  have  pained  me  more  that  '  the  proprietor'  should 
have  'often  wished  to  make  alterations,  than  it  could  give  pleasure 
that  the  rest  of  Arczzo  rose  against  his  r^ght  (for  rigid  he  had) ;  tlio 
depreciation  of  the  lowest  of  manVcind  is  more  painful  than  the  applause 
of  the  highest  is  pleasing;  the  sting  of  a  scorpion  is  more  in  torture 
than  the  possession  of  anything  could  be  in  rapture." 

f  A  public  subscription  .secured  the  house  in  which  Shakspeare  was 
born  at  Rtratford-on-Avon.  Durcr's  house,  at  Nuremberg,  is  still  re- 
ligiously proservod,  and  its  features  are  unaltered.  The  house  in 
which  Michael  Augelo  resided  at  Florence  is  also  carefully  guarded, 
aid  the  rooms  are  still  in  the  condition  in  which  they  were  left  by  the 
great  master. — Eu. 


RELICS   OF   GENIUS.  337 

the  Louse  wliicli  Voltaire  inhabited,  and  at  Ferney  his 
study,  are  both  preserved  inviolate.  In  the  study  of 
Montesquieu  at  La  Brcde,  near  Bordeaux,  the  proprietor 
has  preserved  all  the  furniture,  Avithout  altering  anything, 
that  the  apartment  where  this  great  man  meditated  on 
his  immortal  work  should  want  for  nothing  to  assist  the 
reveries  of  the  spectator;  and  on  the  side  of  the  chimney 
is  still  seen  a  place  which  while  writing  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  rub  his  feet  against,  as  they  rested  on  it.  In  a 
keep  or  dungeon  of  this  feudal  chateau,  the  local  associa- 
tion suggested  to  the  philosopher  his  chapter  on  "  The 
Liberty  of  the  Citizen."  It  is  the  second  chapter  of  tlie 
twelfth  book,  of  which  the  close  is  remarkable. 

Let  us  regret  that  the  little  villa  of  Pope,  and  the 
poetic  Leasowes  of  Shenstone,  have  fallen  the  victims  of 
property  as  much  as  if  destroyed  by  the  barbarous  hand 
which  cut  down  the  consecrated  tree  of  Shakspeai-e.  The 
very  apartment  of  a  man  of  genius,  the  chair  he  studied 
in,  the  table  he  wrote  on,  are  contemplated  with  curiosity ; 
the  spot  is  full  of  local  impressions.  And  all  this  hap- 
pens from  an  unsatisfied  desire  to  see  and  hear  him  whom 
we  never  can  see  nor  hear ;  yet,  in  a  moment  of  illusion, 
if  we  listen  to  a  traditional  conversation,  if  we  can  revive 
one  of  his  feelings,  if  we  can  catch  "but  a  dim  image,  we 
reproduce  this  man  of  genius  before  us,  on  whose  features 
we  so  often  dwell.  Even  the  rage  of  the  military  spirit 
has  taught  itself  to  respect  the  abode  of  genius;  and 
Csesar  and  Sylla,  who  never  spared  the  blood  of  their  own 
Rome,  alike  felt  their  spirit  rebuked,  and  alike  saved  the 
literary  city  of  Athens.  Antiquity  has  preserved  a  beau- 
tiful incident  of  this  nature,  in  the  noble  reply  of  the  art- 
ist Protogenes.  "When  the  city  of  Rhodes  was  taken  by 
Demetrius,  the  man  of  genius  was  discovered  in  his  gar- 
den, tranquilly  finishing  a  picture.  "  How  is  it  that  you 
do  not  participate  in  the  general  alarm  ?"  asked  the  con- 
queror. "  Demetrius,  you  war  against  the  Rhodians,  but 
22 


33S  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

not  against  the  fine  arts,"  replied  the  man  of  genius.  De- 
metrius had  already  shown  this  by  his  conduct,  for  he 
forbade  firing  that  part  of  the  city  where  the  artist  re- 
sided. 

The  house  of  the  man  of  genius  has  been  spared  amidst 
contending  empires,  from  the  days  of  Pindar  to  those  of 
Buftbn ;  "  the  Historian  of  Nature's "  chateau  was  pre- 
served from  this  elevated  feeling  by  Prince  Schwartzen- 
berg,  as  our  Marlborough  had  performed  the  same  glori- 
ous ofBce  in  guarding  the  hallowed  asylum  of  Fenelon.  * 
In  the  grandeur  of  Milton's  verse  yve  perceive  the  feeling 
he  associated  Avith  this  literary  honour : 

The  great  Emathian  conquoror  bid  spare 

The  house  of  Pindarus  when  temple  aud  tower 

Went  to  the  ground . 

And  the  meanest  things,  the  very  hoiisehold  stuff,  asso- 
ciated with  the  Tnemory  of  the  man  of  genius,  become  the 
objects  of  our  affections.  At  a  festival,  in  honour  of 
Thomson,  the  poet,  the  chair  in  which  he  composed  part 
of  his  "  Seasons"  was  produced,  and  appears  to  have  com- 
municated some  of  the  raptui'es  to  which  he  was  liable 
who  had  sat  in  that  chair.  Rabelais,  amongst  his  drollest 
inventions,  could  not  have  imagined  that  his  old  cloak 
would  have  been  preserved  in  the  university  of  Montpe- 
lier  for  future  doctors  to  wear  on  the  day  they  took  their 
degree  ;  nor  could  Shakspeare  have  supposed,  Avith  all  his 
fancy,  that  the  mulberry-tree  which  he  planted  would 
have  been  multiplied  into  relics.  But  in  such  instances 
the  feeling  is  right,  with  a  wrong  direction ;  and  while 
the  popuhu'c  arc  exhausting  their  emotions  on  an  old  tree, 
an  old  chair,  and  an  old  cloak,  they  are  paying  that  in- 

*  Tlio  printing  ofTice  of  Plantyn,  at  Antwerp,  was  guarded  in  a 
Bimiliir  manner,  during  the  great  revohition  that  separated  Ilohand  and 
Belgium,  wlion  a  troop  of  soldiers  wore  stationed  in  its  courtyard.  See 
"Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  i.,  p.  77,  noce—  Ed. 


ENGLAND  HONOURED  BY  ITS  AUTHORS.    339 

voluntary  tribute  to  genius  which  forms  its  pride,  and 
will  o-enerate  the  race. 


CHAPTER    XXV. 


Influence  of  Authors  on  society,  and  of  society  on  Authors. — National 
tastes  a  source  of  literary  prejudices. — True  Genius  always  the  organ 
of  its  nation. — Master-writers  preserve  the  distinct  national  charac- 
ter.— Genius  the  organ  of  the  state  of  the  age. — Causes  of  its  sup- 
pression in  a  people. — Often  invented,  but  neglected. — The  natural 
gradations  of  genius. — Men  of  Genius  produce  their  usefulness  ia 
privacy. — The  public  mind  is  now  the  creation  of  the  public  WTiter. — 
Politicians  affect  to  deny  tliis  principle. — Authors  stand  between  the 
governors  and  the  governed. — 'A  vievr  of  the  solitary  Author  in  Ids 
study. — They  create  an  epoch  in  history. — Influence  of  popular  Au- 
thors.— The  immortality  of  thought. — The  Family  of  Genius  illus- 
trated by  their  genealogy. 

LITERARY  fame,  which  is  the  sole  preserver  of  all 
other  fame,  participates  little,  and  remotely,  in  the 
remuneration  and  the  honours  of  professional  characters. 
All  other  professions  press  more  immediately  on  the 
wants  and  attentions  of  men,  than  the  occupations  of  Lit- 
erary Characters,  who  from  their  habits  are  secluded ; 
producing  their  usefulness  often  at  a  late  period  of  life, 
and  not  always  valued  by  their  own  generation. 

It  is  not  the  commercial  character  of  a  nation  which 
inspires  veneration  in  mankind,  nor  will  its  military 
power  engage  the  affections  of  its  neighbours.  So  late 
as  in  1700  the  Italian  Gemelli  told  all  Europe  that  he 
could  find  nothing  among  us  but  our  xoritings  to  distin- 
guish us  from  a  people  of  barbarians.  It  was  long 
considered  that  our  genius  partook  of  the  density  and 
variableness  of  our  climate,  and  that  we  were  incapaci- 
tated even  by  situation  from  the  enjoyments  of  those 
beautiful  arts  which  have  not  yet  travelled  to  us— as  if 


340  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Nature  herself  had  designed  to  disjoin  lis  from  moi'C 
polished  nations  and  brighter  skies. 

At  length  we  have  triumphed  !  Our  philosophers,  our 
poets,  and  our  historians,  are  printed  at  foreign  presses. 
This  is  a  perpetual  victory,  and  establishes  the  ascendancy 
of  our  genius,  as  much  at  least  as  the  commerce  and  the 
prowess  of  England.  This  singular  revolution  in  the 
history  of  the  human  mind,  and  by  its  reaction  this 
singular  revolution  in  human  afiairs,  was  effected  by  a 
glorious  succession  of  authors,  who  have  enabled  our 
nation  to  arbitrate  among  the  nations  of  Europe,  and  to 
possess  ourselves  of  their  involuntary  esteem  by  dis- 
coveries in  science,  by  principles  in  philosophy,  by  truths 
in  history,  and  even  by  the  graces  of  fiction ;  and  there 
is  not  a  man  of  genius  among  foreigners  who  stands 
unconnected  with  oiir  intellectual  sovereignty.  Even 
had  our  country  displayed  more  limited  resources  than 
its  awful  jiowers  have  opened,  and  had  the  sphere  of  its 
dominion  been  enclosed  by  its  island  boundaries,  if  the 
same  national  literary  character  had  predominated,  we 
should  have  stood  on  the  same  eminence  among  our 
Continental  rivals.  The  small  cities  of  Athens  and  of 
Florence  "will  perpetually  attest  the  influence  of  the 
literary  character  over  other  nations.  The  one  received 
the  tribute  of  the  mistress  of  the  universe,  when  the 
Romans  sent  their  youth  to  be  educated  at  the  Grecian 
city,  while  the  other,  at  the  revival  of  letters,  beheld 
every  polished  European  crowding  to  its  little  court. 

In  closing  this  imperfect  work  by  attempting  to 
ascertain  the  real  influence  of  authors  on  society,  it  will 
be  necessary  to  notice  some  curious  facts  in  the  history 
of  genius. 

The  distinct  literary  tastes  of  different  nations,  and  the 
repugnance  tliey  mutually  betray  for  the  master-writers 
of  each  other,  is  an  im]K)rtant  circumstance  to  tlie 
philosophical  observer.     These  national  tastes  originate 


NATIONAL  AUTHORS.  341 

in  modes  of  feeling,  in  customs,  in  idioms,  and  all  tlie 
numerous  associations  prevalent  among  every  people. 
The  reciprocal  influence  of  manners  on  taste,  and  of 
taste  on  manners — of  government  and  religion  on  the 
literature  of  a  people,  and  of  their  literature  on  the 
national  character,  with  other  congenial  objects  of 
inquiry,  still  require  a  more  ample  investigation. 
Whoever  attempts  to  reduce  this  diversity,  and  these 
strong  contrasts  of  national  tastes  to  one  common  stand- 
ard, by  forcing  such  dissimilar  objects  into  comparative 
parallels,  or  by  trying  them  by  conventional  principles 
and  arbitrary  regulations,  will  often  condemn  what  in 
truth  his  mind  is  inadequate  to  comprehend,  and  the 
experience  of  his  associations  to  combine. 

These  attempts  have  been  the  fertile  source  in 
literature  of  what  may  be  called  national  prejudices. 
The  French  nation  insists  that  the  northerns  are  defective 
in  taste — the  taste,  they  tell  us,  which  is  established  at 
Paris,  and  which  existed  at  Athens:  the  Gothic  imagina- 
tion of  the  north  spurns  at  the  timid  copiers  of  the 
Latin  classics,  and  interminable  disputes  prevail  in  their 
literature,  as  in  their  architecture  and  their  painting. 
Philosophy  discovers  a  fact  of  which  taste  seems  little 
conscious;  it  is,  that  genius  varies  with  the  soil,  and 
produces  a  nationality  of  taste.  The  feelings  of  mankind 
indeed  have  the  same  common  source,  but  they  must 
come  to  us  through  the  medium  and  by  the  modifica- 
tions of  society.  Love  is  a  universal  passion,  but  the 
poetry  of  love  in  diiferent  nations  is  peculiar  to  each ; 
for  every  great  poet  belongs  to  his  country.  Petrarch, 
Lope  de  Vega,  Racine,  Shakspeare,  and  Sadi,  would  each 
express  this  universal  passion  by  the  most  specific 
differences ;  and  the  style  that  would  be  condemned  as 
unnatural  by  one  people,  might  be  habitual  with  another. 
The  concetti  of  the  Italian,  the  figurative  style  of  the 
Persian,   the   swelling   grandeur  of   the  Spaniard,   the 


342  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Classical  correctness  of  the  French,  are  all  modifications 
of  genius,  relatively  true  to  each  particular  writer.  On 
national  tastes  critics  are  but  wrestlers :  the  Spaniard 
will  still  prefer  his  Lope  de  Vega  to  the  French  Kacine, 
or  the  English  his  Shakspeare,  as  the  Italian  his  Tasso 
and  his  Petrarch.  Hence  all  national  writers  are 
studied  with  enthusiasm  by  their  own  people,  and  their 
very  peculiarities,  oiFensive  to  others,  with  the  natives 
constitute  their  excellences.  Nor  does  this  perpetual 
contest  about  the  great  writers  of  other  nations  solely 
arise  from,  an  association  of  patriotic  glory,  but  really 
because  these  great  native  Avriters  have  most  strongly 
excited  the  sympathies  and  conformed  to  the  habitual 
tastes  of  their  own  people. 

Hence,  then,  we  deduce  that  true  genius  is  the  organ 
of  its  nation.  The  creative  faculty  is  itself  created ;  for 
it  is  tlie  nation  which  first  imj^arts  an  imjDulse  to  the 
character  of  genius.  Such  is  the  real  source  of  those 
distinct  tastes  which  we  perceive  in  all  great  national 
authors'.  Every  literary  work,  to  ensure  its  success, 
must  adapt  itself  to  the  sympathies  and  the  understand- 
higs  of  the  people  it  addresses.  Hence  those  02:)posite 
characteristics,  which  are  usually  ascribed  to  the  master- 
wi-iters  themselves,  originate  with  the  country,  and  not 
with  the  writer.  Lope  de  Vega,  and  Calderon,  in  their 
dramas,  and  Cervantes,  who  has  left  his  name  as  the 
epithet  of  a  peculiar  grave  humour,  were  Spaniards 
before  they  were  men  of  genius.  Corneille,  Racine,  and 
Rabelais,  are  entirely  of  an  opposite  character  to  the 
Spaniards,  having  adapted  their  genius  to  their  own 
declamatory  and  vivacious  countrymen.  Petrarch  and 
Tasso  display  a  fancifulness  in  depicting  the  passions,  as 
Boccaccio  narrates  his  facetious  stories,  quite  distinct 
from  the  inventions  and  style  of  northern  writers. 
Shakspeare  is  j)laced  at  a  wider  interval  from  all  of  them 
than  they  are  from  eacli  other,  and  is  as  perfectly  insular 


NATIONAL   AUTHORS.  343 

in  Ills  genius  as  his  own  countrymen  were  in  tlieir  cus- 
toms, and  their  modes  of  thinking  and  feeling. 

Thus  the  master-writers  of  every  people  preserve  the 
distinct  national  character  in  their  works  ;  and  hence 
that  extraordinary  enthusiasm  with  which  every  people 
read  their  own  fiivourite  authors ;  but  in  which  otiiers 
cannot  participate,  and  for  which,  with  all  their  national 
prejudices,  they  often  recriminate  on  each  other  with 
false  and  even  ludicrous  criticism. 

But  genius  is  not  only  the  organ  of  its  nation,  it  is 
also  that  of  the  state  of  the  times;  and  a  great  work 
usually  originates  in  the  age.  Certain  events  must  pre- 
cede the  man  of  genius,  who  often  becomes  only  the 
vehicle  of  public  feeling.  Machiavel  has  been  reproached 
for  propagating  a  political  system  subversive  of  all 
human  honour  and  happiness  ;  but  was  it  Machiavel  who 
formed  his  age,  or  the  age*  which  created  Machia^'el  ? 
Livmg  among  the  petty  principalities  of  Italy,  where 
stratagem  and  assassination  were  the  practices  of  those 
wretched  courts,  what  did  that  calumniated  genius  more 
than  lift  the  veil  from  a  cabinet  of  banditti?  Machiavel 
alarmed  the  world  by  exposing  a  system  subversive  of  all 
human  virtue  and  happiness,  and,  whether  he  meant  it  or 
not,  certainly  led  the  way  to  j)olitical  freedom.  On  the 
same  jjnnciple  we  may  learn  that  Boccaccio  would  not 
have  written  so  many  indecent  tales  had  not  the  scandal- 
ous lives  of  the  monks  engaged  public  attention.  This 
we  may  now  regret ;  but  the  court  of  Rome  felt  the  con- 
cealed satire,  and  that  luxurious  and  numerous  class  in 
society  never  recovered  from  the  chastisement, 

Montaigne  has  been  censured  for  his  universal  scepti- 
cism, and  for  the  unsettled  notions  he  drew  out  on  his 
motley  page,  which  has  been  attributed  to  his  incapacity 
of  forming  decisive  opinions.  "  Que  s^ais-je  ?"  was  his 
motto.  The  same  accusation  may  reach  the  gentle  Eras- 
mus, who  alike  offended  the  old  catholics  and  the  new 


Sir-i  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

reformers.  The  real  source  of  their  vacillations  we  may 
discover  in  the  age  itself.  It  was  one  of  controversy  and 
of  civil  wars,  when  the  minds  of  men  were  thrown  into 
perpetual  agitation,  and  opinions,  like  the  victories  of  the 
parties,  were  every  day  changing  sides. 

Even  in  its  advancement  beyond  the  intelligence  of  its 
own  age  genius  is  but  progressive.  In  nature  all  is  con- 
tinuous ;  she  makes  no  starts  and  leaps.  Genius  is  said 
to  soar,  but  we  should  rather  say  that  genius  climbs. 
Did  the  gi-eat  Verulam,  or  Rawleigh,  or  Dr.  More,  eman- 
cipate themselves  from  all  the  dreams  of  their  age,  from 
the  occult  agency  of  witchcraft,  the  astral  influence,  and 
the  ghost  and  demon  creed  ? 

Before  a  particular  man  of  genius  can  appear,  certain 
events  must  arise  to  prepare  the  age  for  him.  *A  great 
commercial  nation,  in  the  maturity  of  time,  opened  all 
the  sources  of  w^ealth  to  the  contemplation  of  Adam 
Smith.  That  extensive  system  of  what  is  called  political 
economy  could  not  have  been  produced  at  any  other 
time ;  for  before  this  period  the  materials  of  this  work 
had  but  an  imperfect  existence,  and  the  advances  which 
this  sort  of  science  had  made  were  only  partial  and  pre- 
paratory. If  the  principle  of  Adam  Smith's  great  work 
seems  to  confound  the  happiness  of  a  nation  with  its 
wealth,  we  can  scarcely  reproach  the  man  of  genius,  who 
we  shall  find  is  always  reflecting  back  the  feelings  of  his 
own  nation,  even  in  his  most  original  speculations. 

In  works  of  pure  imagination  we  trace  the  same  march 
of  the  human  intellect ;  and  Ave  discover  in  those  inven- 
tions, wliich  ajipear  sealed  by  their  originality,  how  much 
has  been  dei-ived  from  the  age  and  the  people  in  which 
they  were  produced.  Every  Avork  of  genius  is  tinctured 
by  the  feelings,  and  often  originates  in  the  events,  of  the 
times.  The  Inferno  of  Dante  was  caught  from  the 
popular  superstitions  of  the  age,  and  had  been  preceded 
by  the  gross  visions  which  the  monks  had  forged,  usually 


NATIONAL  AUTHORS.  3^:5 

for  their  own  purposes.  "  La  Citti  dolente,"  and  "  la 
pdrduta  gente,"  were  familar  to  the  imaginations  of  the 
people,  by  the  monkish  visions,  and  it  seems  even  by- 
ocular  illusions  of  Hell,  exhibited  in  Mystei'ies,  with  its 
gulfs  of  flame,  and  its  mountains  of  ice,  and  the  shrieks 
of  the  condemned.*  To  produce  the  "  Liferno "  only 
required  the  giant  step  of  genius,  in  the  sombre,  the 
awful,  and  the  fierce,  Dante.  When  the  age  of  chivalry 
flourished,  all  breathed  of  love  and  courtesy ;  the  great 
man  was  the  great  lover,  and  the  great  author  the  ro- 
mancer. It  was  from  his  own  age  that  Milton  derived 
his  greatest  blemish — the  introduction  of  school-divinity 
into  poetry.  In  a  polemical  age  the  poet,  as  Avell  as  the 
sovereign,  reflected  the  reigning  tastes. 

There  are  accidents  to  which  genius  is  liable,  and  by 
which  it  is  frequently  suppressed  in  a  people.  The 
establishment  of  the  Inquisition  in  Spain  at  one  stroke 
annihilated  all  the  genius  of  the  country.  Cervantes 
said  that  the  Inquisition  had  spoilt  many  of  his  most 
delightful  inventions ;  and  unquestionably  it  silenced  the 
wit  and  invention  of  a  nation  whose  proverbs  attest  they 
possessed  them  even  to  luxuriance.  All  the  continental 
nations  have  boasted  great  native  painters  and  architects, 
while  these  arts  were  long  truly  foreign  to  us.  Theoret- 
ical critics,  at  a  loss  to  account  for  this  '  singularity, 
accused  not  only  our  climate,  but  even  our  diet,  as  the 
occult  causes  of  our  unfitness  to  cultivate  them.  Yet 
Montesquieu  and  Winkelmann  might  have  observed  that 
the  air  of  fens  and  marshes  had  not  deprived  the  gross 
feeders  of  Holland  and  Flanders  of  admirable  artists. 
We  have  been  outrageously  calumniated.     So  far  from 

*  Sismondi  relates  that  the  bed  of  the  river  Arno,  at  Florence,  wag 
transformed  into  a  representation  of  the  Gulf  of  Hell,  in  the  year 
1304;  and  that  all  the  variety  of  suffering  that  monkish  imagination 
had  invented  was  apparently  inflicted  on  real  persons,  whose  shrieks 
and  groans  gave  fearful  reality  to  the  appalling  scene. — Eb. 


346  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

any  national  incapacity,  or  obtuse  feelings,  attaching  to 
ourselves  in  respect  to  these  arts,  the  noblest  efforts  had 
long  been  made,  not  only  by  individuals,  but  by  the 
magnificence  of  Henry  VIII.,  who  invited  to  his  court 
Raphael  and  Titian;  but  unfortunately  only  obtained 
Holbein.  A  later  sovereign,  Charles  the  First,  not  only 
possessed  galleries  of  pictures,  and  was  the  greatest  jjur- 
chaser  in  Europe,  for  he  raised  their  value,  but  he  like- 
wise possessed  the  taste  and  the  science  of  the  connois- 
seur. Something,  indeed,  had  occurred  to  our  national 
genius,  which  had  thrown  it  into  a  stupifying  state,  from 
which  it  is  yet  hardly  aroused.  Could  those  foreign 
philosophers  have  ascended  to  moral  causes,  instead  of 
vapouring  forth  fanciful  notions,  they  might  have  struck 
at  the  true  cause  of  the  deficiency  in  our  national  genius. 
The  jealousy  of  puritanic  fanaticism  had  persecuted  these 
arts  from  the  first  rise  of  the  Reformation  in  this  country. 
It  had  not  only  banished  them  from  our  churches  and 
altai'-pieces,  but  the  fury  of  the  people,  and  the  "  wisdom  " 
of  parliament,  had  alike  combined  to  mutilate  and  even 
efllice  what  little  remained  of  painting  and  sculpture 
among  us.  Even  within  our  own  times  tliis  deadly 
hostility  to  art  was  not  extinct ;  for  when  a  proposal  was 
made  gratuitously  to  decorate  our  places  of  worship  by 
a  series  of  religious  pictures,  and  English  artists,  in  2:>ure 
devotion  to  Art,  zealous  to  confute  the  Conthiental 
calumniators,  asked  only  for  walls  to  cover,  George  the 
Third  highly  approved  of  the  plan.  Tlie  design  was  put 
aside,  as  some  had  a  notion  that  the  cultivation  of  the 
fine  arts  in  our  naked  churches  was  a  retm-n  to  Catholi- 
cism. Had  this  glorious  plan  been  realized,  the  golden 
age  of  English  art  miglit  have  arisen.  Every  artist 
would  have  invented  a  subject  most  congenial  to  his 
powers.  Reynolds  would  have  emulated  Raphael  in  the 
Virgin  and  Child  in  the  manger,  West  had  fixed  on 
Christ  raising  the  young  man  from  the  dead,  Barry  had 


ENGLISH  ARCHITECTS.  347 

profoundly  meditated  on  the  Jews  rejecting  Jesus.  Thus 
did  an  age  of  genius  perish  before  its  birth  !  It  was  on 
the  occasion  of  this  frustrated  project  that  Barry,  in 
the  rage  of  disappointment,  immortalised  himself  by  a 
gratuitous  labour  of  seven  years  on  the  walls  of  the 
Society  of  Arts,  for  which,  it  is  said,  the  French  govern- 
ment under  Buonaparte  offered  ten  thousand  pounds. 

Thus  also  it  has  happened,  that  we  have  possessed 
among  ourselves  great  architects,  although  opportunities 
for  displaying  their  genius  have  been  rare.  This  the 
fate  and  fortune  of  two  Englishmen  attest.  Without 
the  fire  of  London  we  might  not  have  shown  the  world 
one  of  the  greatest  architects,  in  Sir  Christopher  Wren ; 
had  not  a  St.  Paul's  been  required  by  the  nation  he 
would  have  found  no  opportunity  of  displaying  the 
magnificence  of  his  genius,  which  even  then  was  muti- 
lated, as  the  original  model  bears  witness  to  the  world. 
That  great  occasion  served  this  noble  architect  to  mul- 
tiply his  powers  in  other  public  edifices :  and  it  is  here 
worth  remarking  that,  had  not  Charles  11.  been  seized 
by  apoplexy,  the  royal  residence,  which  was  begun  at 
Winchester  on  a  plan  of  Sir  Christopher  Wren's,  by  its 
magnificence  would  have  raised  a  Versailles  for  Eng- 
land. 

The  fate  of  Inigo  Jones  is  as  remarkable  as  that  of 
Wren.  Whitehall  afforded  a  proof  to  foreigners  that 
among  a  people  which,  before  that  edifice  appeared,  was 
reproached  for  their  total  deficiency  of  feeling  for  the 
pure  classical  style  of  architecture,  the  true  taste  could 
nevertheless  exist.  This  celebrated  piece  of  architecture, 
however,  is  but  a  fragment  of  a  grander  composition,  by 
which,  had  not  the  civil  wars  intervened,  the  fame  of 
Britain  would  have  balanced  the  glory  of  Greece,  or 
Italy,  or  France,  and  would  have  shown  that  our 
country  is  more  deficient  in  marble  than  in  genius.  Thus 
the  fii'e  of  Loudon  produces  a  St.  Paul's,  and  the  civil 


348  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

wars  suppress  a  Whitehall.  Such  circumstances  in  the; 
history  of  art  among  nations  have  not  always  been  de- 
veloj^ed  by  those  theorists  who  have  calumniated  the 
artists  of  England. 

In  the  history  of  genius  it  is  remarkable  that  its  work 
is  often  invented,  and  lies  neglected.  A  close  observer 
of  this  age  pointed  out  to  me  that  the  military  genius  of 
that  great  Fi-ench  captain,  who  so  long  appeared  to  have 
conquered  Eurof)e,  was  derived  from  his  applying  the 
new  principles  of  war  discovered  by  Folard  and  Guibert. 
The  genius  of  Folard  observed  that,  among  the  changes 
of  military  discipline  in  the  practice  of  war  among  Euro- 
pean nations  since  the  introduction  of  gunpowder,  one 
of  the  ancient  methods  of  the  Romans  had  been  im- 
properly neglected,  and,  in  his  Commentaries  on  Poly- 
bius,  Folard  revived  this  forgotten  mode  of  warfare. 
Guibert,  in  his  great  work,  "  Histoire  de  la  Milice  Fran- 
^aise,"  or  rather  the  History  of  the  Art  of  War,  adopted 
Folard's  system  of  charging  by  columns,  and  breaking 
the  centre  of  the  enemy,  which  seems  to  be  the  famous 
plan  of  our  Rodney  and  Nelson  in  their  maritime  battles. 
But  this  favourite  plan  became  the  ridicule  of  the  mili- 
tary; and  the  boldness  of  his  pen,  with  the  high  confi- 
dence of  the  author,  only  excited  adversaries  to  mortify 
his  pretensions,  and  to  treat  him  as  a  dreamei*.  From 
this  perpetual  opposition  to  his  plans,  and  the  neglect  he 
incurred,  Guibert  died  of  "  vexation  of  spirit ;"  and  the 
last  words  on  the  death-bed  of  this  man  of  genius  were, 
"  One  day  they  will  know  me !"  Folard  and  Guibert 
created  a  Buonaparte,  who  studied  them  on  the  field  of 
battle;  and  he  who  would  trace  the  military  genuis  who 
BO  long  held  in  suspense  the  fate  of  the  world,  may  dis- 
cover all  that  he  performed  in  the  neglected  inventions  of 
preceding  genius. 

Hence  also  may  we  deduce  the  natural  gradations  of 
genius.     Many  men  of  genius  must  arise  before  a  particu- 


INFLUElSrCE  OF  AUTHORS.  349 

lar  man  of  genius  can  appear.  Before  Hcimer  there 
•were  other  epic  poets ;  a  catalogue  of  their  names  and 
their  works  has  come  down  to  us.  Corneille  could  not 
have  been  the  chief  dramatist  of  France  had  not  the 
founders  of  the  Frehch  drama  preceded  him,  and  Pope 
could  not  hare  preceded  Dryden.  It  was  in  the  nature 
of  things  that  a  Giotto  and  a  Cimabue  should  have  pre- 
ceded a  Raphael  and  a  Michael  Angelo. 

Even  the  writings  of  such  extravagant  geniuses  as 
Bruno  and  Cardan  gave  indications  of  the  j^rogress  of 
the  human  mind;  and  had  Ramus  not  shaken  the  au- 
thority of  the  Organon  of  Aristotle  we  might  not  have 
had  the  Novum  Organon  of  Bacon.  Men  slide  into  their 
degree  in  the  scale  of  genius  often  by  the  exercise  of  a 
single  qiiality  which  their  predecessors  did  not  possess, 
or  by  completing  what  at  first  was  left  imperfect.  Truth 
is  a  single  point  in  knowledge,  as  beauty  is  in  art :  ages 
revolve  till  a  Newton  and  a  Locke  accomplish  what  an 
Aristotle  and  a  Descartes  began.  The  old  theory  of 
animal  spirits,  observes  Professor  Dugald  Stewart,  was 
applied  by  Descartes  to  explain  the  mental  phenomena 
which  led  Newton  into  that  train  of  thinking,  which 
served  as  the  groundwork  of  Hartley's  theory  of  vibra- 
tions. The  learning  of  one  man  makes  others  learned, 
and  the  influence  of  genius  is  in  nothing  more  remark- 
able than  in  its  efiects  on  its  brothers.  Selden's  treatise 
on  the  Syrian  and  Arabian  Deities  enabled  Milton  to 
comprise,  in  one  hundred  and  thirty  beautiful  lines,  the 
two  large  and  learned  syntagma  which  Selden  had  com- 
posed on  that  abstract  subject.  Leland,  the  father  of 
British  antiquities,  impelled  Stowe  to  work  on  his  "  Survey 
of  London  ;"  and  Stowe's  "  London  "  inspired  Camden's 
stupendoiis  "  Britannia."  Herodotus  produced  Thucydi- 
des,  and  Thucydides  Xenophon.  With  us  Hume,  Robert- 
son, and  Gibbon  rose  almost  simultaneously  by  mutual  in- 
spiration.    There  exists  a  perpetual  action  and  reaction  in 


350  LITERARY  CHARICTER. 

the  history  of  the  human  miad.  It  has  frequently  been 
inquired  why  certain  periods  seem,  to  have  been  more 
favourable  to  a  particular  class  of  genius  than  another ; 
or,  in  other  words,  why  men  of  genius  appear  in  clus- 
ters. We  have  theories  respecting  barren  periods,  which 
are  only  satisfectorily  accounted  for  by  moral  causes. 
Genius  generates  enthusiasm  and  rivalry ;  but,  having 
reached  the  meridian  of  its  class,  we  find  that  there  can 
be  no  progress  in  the  limited  perfection  of  human  nature. 
All  excellence  in  art,  if  it  cannot  advance,  must  decline. 

Imj)ortant  discoveries  are  often  obtained  by  accident ; 
but  the  single  work  of  a  man  of  genius,  which  has  at 
length  changed  the  charactei*  of  a  people,  and  even  of  an 
age,  is  slowly  matured  in  meditation.  Even  the  me- 
chanical inventions  of  genius  must  first  become  perfect  in 
its  own  solitary  abode  ere  the  world  can  possess  them. 
]Men  of  genius  then  produce  their  usefulness  in  privacy ; 
but  it  may  not  be  of  immediate  application,  and  is  often 
undervalued  by  their  own  generation. 

The  influence  of  authors  is  so  great,  while  the  author 
himself  is  so  inconsiderable,  that  to  some  the  cause  may 
not  appear  commensurate  to  its  eifect.  When  Epicurus 
published  his  doctrines,  men  immediately  began  to  ex- 
press themselves  with  freedom  on  the  established  religion, 
and  the  dark  and  fearful  superstitions  of  paganism,  felling 
into  neglect,  mouldered  away.  If,  then,  before  the  art  of 
multiplying  the  productions  of  the  human  mind  existed, 
the  doctrines  of  a  philosopher  in  manuscript  or  by  lecture 
could  diffuse  themselves  throughout  a  literary  nation,  it 
will  baffle  the  algebraist  of  metaphysics  to  calculate  the 
unknown  quantities  of  the  propagation  of  human  thought. 
There  are  problems  in  metaphysics,  as  well  as  in  mathe- 
matics, which  can  never  be  resolved. 

A  small  portion  of  mankind  appears  marked  out  by 
nature  and  by  study  for  the  purpose  of  cultivating  their 
thoughts  in  peace,  and  of  giving  activity  to  their  discov 


INFLUENCE   OF  AUTHORS.  351 

enes,  by  disclosing  them  to  tlie  people.  "  Could  I,"  ex- 
claims Montesquieu,  whose  heart  was  beating  with  the 
feelings  of  a  great  author,  "  could  I  but  afford  new  rea- 
sons to  men  to  love  their  duties,  their  king,  their  country, 
their  laws,  that  they  might  become  more  sensible  of  their 
happiness  under  every  government  they  live,  and  in  every 
station  they  occupy,  I  should  deem  myself  the  happiest  of 
mon  !"  Such  was  the  pure  aspiration  of  the  great  author 
who  studied  to  preserve,  by  ameliorating,  the  humane 
fabric  of  society.  The  same  largeness  of  mind  character- 
ises all  the  eloquent  friends  of  the  human  race.  In  an  age 
of  religious  intolerance  it  inspired  the  President  DeThou 
to  inculcate,  from  sad  experience  and  a  juster  view  of  hu- 
man nature,  the  impolicy  as  well  as  the  inhumanity  of  re- 
ligious persecutions,  in  that  dedication  to  Henry  I Y.,  which 
Lord  Mansfield  declared  he  could  never  read  without 
rapture.  "  I  was  not  born  for  myself  alone,  but  for  my 
country  and  my  friends !"  exclaimed  the  genius  which 
hallowed  the  virtuous  pages  of  his  immortal  history. 

Even  our  liberal  yet  dispassionate  Locke  restrained  the 
freedom  of  his  inquiries,  and  corrected  the  errors  which 
the  highest  intellect  may  fall  into,  by  marking  out  that 
impassable  boundary  which  must  probably  for  ever 
limit  all  human  intelligence  ;  for  the  maxim  which  Locke 
constantly  inculcates  is  that  "  Reason  must  be  the  last- 
judge  and  guide  in  everything."  A  final  answer  to  those 
who  propagate  their  opinions,  whatever  they  may  be, 
with  a  sectarian  spirit,  to  foi'ce  the  understandings  of 
other  men  to  their  own  modes  of  belief,  and  their  own 
variable  opinions.  This  alike  includes  those  who  yield 
up  nothing  to  the  genius  of  their  age  to  coiTCCt  the  im- 
perfections of  society,  and  those  who,  opposing  all  human 
experience,  would  anniliilate  what  is  most  admirable  in 
its  institutions. 

The  public  mind  is  the  creation  of  the  Master-Writers — 
an  axiom  as  demonstrable  as  any  in  Euclid,  and  a  princi- 


352  LITERARY  CHA.RA.OTER. 

pie  as  sure  in  its  operation  as  any  in  mechanics.  Bacon's 
influence  over  philosophy,  and  Grotius's  over  the  politi- 
cal state  of  society,  are  still  felt,  and  their  piinciples 
practised  far  more  than  in  their  own  age.  These  men  of 
genius,  in  their  solitude,  and  with  their  views  not  always 
comprehended  by  their  contemporaries,  became  themselves 
the  founders  of  our  science  and  our  legislation.  When 
Locke  and  Montesquieu  appeared,  the  old  systems  of 
government  were  reviewed,  the  principle  of  toleration 
was  developed,  and  the  revolutions  of  opinion  were  dis- 
covered. 

A  noble  thought  of  Vitruvius,  who,  of  all  the  authors 
of  antiquity,  seems  to  have  been  most  deeply  imbued 
with  the  feelings  of  the  literary  chai'acter,  has  often  struck 
me  by  the  grandeur  and  the  truth  of  its  conception. 
"  The  sentiments  of  excellent  writers,"  he  says,  "  although 
their  persons  be  for  ever  absent,  exist  in  future  ages  ; 
and  in  councils  and  debates  are  of  greater  authority  than 
those  of  the  persons  who  are  present." 

But  politicians  affect  to  disbelieve  that  abstract  princi- 
ples possess  any  considerable  influence  on  the  conduct  of 
the  subject.  They  tell  us  that  "  in  times  of  tranquillity 
they  are  not  wanted,  and  in  times  of  confusion  they  are 
never  heard ;"  this  is  the  philosophy  of  men  who  do  not 
choose  that  pliilosophy  should  disturb  their  fireside  !  But 
it  is  in  leisure,  when  they  are  not  wanted,  tliat  the  specu- 
lative part  of  mankind  create  them,  and  when  they  are 
wanted  they  are  already  prepared  for  the  active  multitude, 
who  come,  like  a  phalanx,  pressing  each  other  with  a  uni- 
ty of  feeling  and  an  integrity  of  force.  Paley  Avould  not 
close  his  eyes  on  what  was  passing  before  him ;  for,  he 
has  observed,  that  during  the  convulsions  at  Geneva,  the 
political  theory  of  Rousseau  was  prevalent  in  their  con- 
tests ;  Avliile,  in  tlie  political  disputes  of  our  country,  the 
ideas  of  civil  authority  displayed  in  tlie  works  of  Locke 
recurred  in  every  form.     The  character  of  a  great  author 


I 


INFLUENCE   OF   AUTHORS.  353 

can  never  be  considered  as  subordinate  in  society ;  nor 
do  politicians  secretly  think  so  at  the  moment  they  are 
proclaiming  it  to  the  world,  for,  on  the  contrary,  they 
consider  the  worst  actions  of  men  as  of  far  less  conse- 
quence than  the  ^propagation  of  their  opinions.  Politi- 
cians have  exposed  their  disguised  terrors.  Books,  as 
well  as  their  authors,  have  been  tried  and  condemned. 
Cromwell  was  alarmed  when  he  saw  the  "  Oceana  "  of 
HaiTington,  and  dreaded  the  effects  of  that  volume  more 
than  the  plots  of  the  Royalists ;  while  Charles  II.  trem- 
bled at  an  author  only  in  his  manuscript  state,  and  in 
the  height  of  terror,  and  to  the  honour  of  genius,  it  was 
decreed,  that  "  Scribere  est  agere." — "  The  book  of  Tele- 
machus,"  says  Madame  de  Stael,  "  was  a  courageous  ac- 
tion," To  insist  with  such  ardour  on  the  duties  of  a  sover- 
eign, and  to  paint  with  such  truth  a  voluptuous  reign, 
disgraced  Fenelon  at  the  court  of  Louis  XIV.,  but 
the  virtuous  author  raised  a  statue  for  himself  in  all 
hearts.  Massillon's  Petit  Careme  was  another  of  these 
animated  recals  of  man  to  the  sympathies  of  his  nature, 
which  proves  the  influence  of  an  author ;  for,  during  the 
contests  of  Loiiis  XV.  with  the  Parliaments,  laro;e  edi- 
tions  of  this  book  were  repeatedly  printed  and  circulated 
through  the  kingdom.  In  such  moments  it  is  that  a  peo- 
ple find  and  know  the  value  of  a  great  author,  whose 
work  is  the  mighty  organ  which  conveys  their  voice  to 
their  governors. 

But,  if  the  influence  of  benevolent  authors  over  society 
is  great,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  abuse  of  this 
influence  is  terrific.  Authors  preside  at  a  tribunal  in 
Europe  which  is  independent  of  all  the  powers  of  the 
earth — the  tribunal  of  Opinion  !  But  since,  as  Sophocles 
has  long  declared,  "  Opinion  is  stronger  than  truth," 
it  is  unquestionable  that  the  falsest  and  the  most  de- 
praved notions  are,  as  long  as  these  opinions  maiu 
tain  their  force,  accepted  as  immutable  truths ;  and 
23 


354:  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

the  mistakes  of  one  man  become  the  crimes  of  a  Avhole 
people. 

Authors  stand  between  the  governors  and  the  gov- 
erned, and  form  the  single  organ  of  both.  Those  who 
govern  a  nation  cannot  at  the  same  time  enlighten  the 
people,  for  the  executive  power  is  not  empirical ;  and 
the  governed  cannot  think,  for  they  have  no  continuity 
of  leisure.  The  great  systems  of  thoiight,  and  the  great 
discoveries  in  moral  and  political  philosophy,  have  come 
from  the  solitude  of  contemplative  men,  seldom  occupied 
in  public  affairs  or  in  private  employments.  The  com- 
mercial world  owes  to  two  retired  philosophers,  Locke 
and  Smith,  those  principles  which  dignify  trade  into  a 
liberal  pursuit,  and  connect  it  "s\dth  the  happiness  and  the 
glory  of  a  people.  A  woi'k  in  France,  under  the  title  of 
"L'Ami  des  Hommes,"  by  the  Marquis  of  Mirabeau, 
first  spread  there  a  general  passion  for  agricultural  pur- 
suits; and  although  the  national  ardour  carried  all  to 
excess  in  the  reveries  of  the  "  Econoraistes,"  yet  marshes 
were  drained  and  waste  lands  inclosed.  The  "  Emilius  " 
of  Rousseau,  whatever  may  be  its  errors  and  extrava- 
gances, operated  a  complete  revolution  in  modern  Europe, 
by  communicating  a  bolder  spirit  to  education,  and  im. 
proving  the  physical  force  and  character  of  man.  An 
Italian  marquis,  whose  birth  and  habits  seemed  little 
favourable  to  study,  operated  a  moral  revolution  in  the 
administration  of  the  laws.  Beccai'ia  dared  to  plead  in 
favour  of  humanity  against  the  prejudices  of  many  cen- 
turies in  his  small  volume  on  "  Crimes  and  Punishments," 
and  at  length  abolished  torture ;  while  the  French  advo- 
cates drew  their  principles  from  that  book,  rather  than 
from  their  national  code,  and  our  Blackstone  quoted  it 
with  admiration !  Locke  and  Voltaire,  having  written 
on  "Toleration,"  have  long  made  us  tolerant.  In  all 
such  cases  the  authors  were  themselves  entirely  uncon- 
nected with  their  subjects,  except  as  speculative  writers. 


INFLUENCE   OF    AUTHORS.  355 

Such  are  the  authors  who  become  universal  in  puLlic 
opinion ;  and  it  then  happens  that  the  work  itself  meets 
•with  the  singular  fate  which  that  gi*eat  genius  Smeaton 
said  happened  to  his  stupendous  "  Pharos  :"  "  The  nov- 
elty having  yearly  -worn  oif,  and  the  greatest  real  praise 
of  the  edifice  being  that  nothing  has  happened  to  it — 
nothing  has  occurred  to  keep  the  talk  of  it  alive."  The 
fundamental  principles  of  such  works,  after  having  long 
entered  into  our  earliest  instructions,  become  unquestion- 
able as  self-evident  propositions  ;  yet  no  one,  perhaps,  at 
this  day  can  rightly  conceive  the  great  merits  of  Locke's 
Treatises  on  "  Education,"  and  on  "  Toleration ;"  or  the 
philosophical  spirit  of  Montesquieu,  and  works  of  this 
high  order,  which  first  difiiised  a  tone  of  thinking  over 
Europe.  The  principles  have  become  so  incorporated 
with  our  judgment,  and  so  interwoven  with  our  feelings, 
that  we  can  hardly  now  imagine  the  fervour  they  excited 
at  the  time,  or  the  magnanimity  of  their  authors  in  the 
decision  of  their  opinions.  Every  first  great  monument 
of  genius  raises  a  new  standard  to  our  knowledge,  from 
which  the  human  mind  takes  its  impulse  and  measures 
its  advancement.  The  march  of  human  thought  through 
ages  might  be  indicated  by  every  great  work  as  it  is 
progressively  succeeded  by  others.  It  stands  like  the 
golden  milliary  column  in  the  midst  of  Rome,  from  which 
all  others  reckoned  their  distances. 

But  a  scene  of  less  grandeur,  yet  more  beautiful,  is  the 
view  of  the  solitary  author  himself  in  his  own  study — so 
deeply  occupied,  that  whatever  passes  before  him  never 
reaches  his  observation,  while,  working  more  than  twelve 
hours  every  day,  he  still  m\;rraurs  as  the  hour  strikes ; 
the  volume  still  lies  open,  the  page  still  importunes — 
"  And  whence  all  this  business  ?"  He  has  made  a  dis- 
covery for  us !  that  never  has  there  been  anything  im- 
portant in  the  active  world  but  what  is  reflected  in  the 
literary — ^books  contain  eA'erything,  even  the  falsehooda 


356 


LITER ARr  CHARACTER. 


and  the  crimes  which  have  been  only  projected  by  man  ! 
This  solitary  man  of  genius,  is  arranging  the  materials  of 
instruction  and  curiosity  from  every  country  and  every 
age ;  he  is  striking  out,  in  the  concussion  of  new  light,  a 
new  order  of  ideas  for  his  own  times ;  he  possesses  secrets 
which  men  hide  from  their  contemporaries,  truths  they 
dared  not  utter,  facts  they  dared  not  discover.  View 
him  in  the  stillness  of  meditation,  his  eager  spirit  busied 
over  a  copious  page,  and  his  eye  sparkling  with  gladness ! 
He  has  concluded  what  his  countrymen  will  hereafter 
cherish  as  the  legacy  of  genius  —  you  see  him  now 
chanffcd :  and  the  restlessness  of  his  soul  is  thrown  into 
his  very  gestures — could  you  listen  to  the  vaticinator ! 
But  the  next  age  only  will  quote  his  predictions.  If  he 
be  the  truly  great  author,  he  will  be  best  comprehended 
by  posterity,  for  the  result  of  ten  years  of  solitary  medi- 
tation has  often  required  a  whole  century  to  be  under- 
stood and  to  be  adopted.  The  ideas  of  Bisliop  Berkeley, 
in  his  "  Theory  of  Vision,"  were  condemned  as  a  pliilo- 
sophical  romance,  and  now  form  an  essential  part  of 
every  treatise  of  optics ;  and  "  The  History  of  Oracles," 
by  Fontenelle,  says  La  Harpe,  which,  in  his  youth,  was 
censured  for  its  impiety,  the  centenarian  lived  to  see 
regarded  as  a  proof  of  his  respect  for  religion. 

"  But  what  influence  can  this  solitary  man,  this  author 
of  genius,  have  on  his  nation,  when  he  has  none  in  the 
very  street  in  which  he  lives?  and  it  may  be  suspected 
as  little  in  his  own  house,  whose  inmates  are  hourly  prac- 
tising on  the  infantine  simplicity  which  marks  his  char- 
acter, and  that  frequent  abstraction  from  what  is  passing 
under  his  own  eyes  ?" 

Thin  solitary  man  of  genius  is  stamping  his  own  char- 
acter on  the  minds  of  his  own  people.  Take  one  in- 
stance, from  others  far  more  splendid,  in  the  contrast 
presented  by  Franklin  and  Sir  WilUam  Jones.  The  par- 
BimoniouB  habits,  tlie  money-getting  precepts,  the  wary 


INFLUEXCE   OF   AUTHORS.  357 

cunning,  tlie  little  scruple  about  means,  the  fixed  intent 
upon  the  end,  of  Dr.  Franklin,  imprinted  themselves  on 
his  Americans.  Loftier  feelings  could  not  elevate  a  man 
of  genius  who  became  the  founder  of  a  trading  people, 
and  who  retained  the  early  habits  of  a  journeyman; 
while  the  elegant  tastes  of  Sir  William  Jones  could  in- 
spire the  servants  of  a  commercial  corporation  to  open  new 
and  vast  sources  of  knowledge.  A  mere  company  of 
merchants,  influenced  by  the  literary  character,  enlarges 
the  stores  of  the  imagination  and  provides  fresh  materials 
for  the  history  of  human  nature. 

Franklin,  with  that  calm  good  sense  which  is  freed 
from  the  passion  of  imaginatioji,  has  himself  declared  this 
important  truth  relating  to  the  literary  character: — "I 
have  always  thought  that  one  man  of  tolerable  abilities 
may  work  great  changes  and  accomplish  great  affairs 
among  mankind,  if  he  first  forms  a  good  plan ;  and  cut- 
ting off  all  amusements,  or  other  employments  that 
would  divert  his  attention,  makes  the  execution  of  that 
same  plan  his  sole  study  and  business."  Fontenelle 
was  of  the  same  opinion,  for  he  remarks  that  "  a  single 
great  man  is  sufllicient  to  accomplish  a  change  in  the 
taste  of  his  age."  The  life  of  Gran\dlle  Sharp  is  a 
striking  illustration  of  the  solitary  force  of  individual 
character. 

It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  great  author,  in  the 
solitude  of  his  study,  has  often  created  an  epoch  in  the 
annals  of  mankind.  A  single  man  of  genius  arose  in  a 
barbarous  period  in  Italy,  who  gave  birth  not  only  to 
Italian,  but  to  European  literature.  Poet,  orator,  phi- 
losopher, geographer,  historian,  and  antiquary,  Petrarch 
kindled  a  line  of  light  through  his  native  land,  while  a 
crowd  of  followers  hailed  their  father-genius,  who  had 
stamped  his  character  on  the  age.  Descartes,  it  has  been 
observed,  accomplished  a  change  in  the  taste  of  his  age 
by  the  perspicacity  and  method  for  which  he  was  in- 


358  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

debted  to  his  mathematical  researches ;  and  "  models  of 
metaphysical  analysis  and  logical  discussions"  in  the 
■works  of  Hnme  and  Smith  have  had  the  same  influence 
in  the  writings  of  our  own  time. 

Even  genius  not  of  the  same  colossal  size  may  aspire 
to  add  to  the  progressive  mass  of  human  improvement 
by  its  own  single  effort.  When  an  author  writes  on  a 
national  subject,  he  awakens  all  the  knowledge  which 
slumbers  in  a  nation,  and  calls  around  him,  as  it  were, 
every  man  of  talent ;  and  though  his  own  fame  may  be 
eclipsed  by  his  successors,  yet  the  emanation,  the  morn- 
ing light,  broke  from  his  solitary  study.  Our  naturalist, 
Ray,  though  no  man  was  more  modest  in  his  claims, 
delighted  to  tell  a  friend  that  "  Since  the  publication  of 
his  catalogue  of  Cambridge  plants,  many  were  prompted 
to  botanical  studies,  and  to  herbalise  in  their  walks  in 
the  fields."  Johnson  has  observed  that  "  An  emulation 
of  study  was  raised  by  Cheke  and  Smith,  to  which  even 
the  present  age  perhaps  owes  many  advantages,  without 
rememberino;  or  knowing;  its  benefactors.  Kollin  is 
only  a  compiler  of  history,  and  to  the  antiquary  he  is 
nothing !  But  races  yet  unborn  will  be  enchanted  by 
that  excellent  man,  in  w^hose  works  "  the  heart  speaks  to 
the  heart,"  and  whom  Montesquieu  called  "  The  Bee  of 
France."  The  Bacons,  the  Newtons,  and  the  Leibnitzes 
were  insulated  by  their  own  creative  powers,  and  stood 
apart  from  the  world,  till  the  dispersers  of  knowledge 
became  their  interpreters  to  the  people,  opening  a  com- 
munication between  two  spots,  which,  though  close  to 
each  other,  were  long  separated — tlie  closet  and  the 
world!  The  Addisons,  tlie  Fontenelles,  and  the  Fey- 
joos,  the  first  popular  authors  in  theii'  nations  who 
tauglit  England,  France,  and  Spain  to  become  a  reading 
people,  while  tlieir  fugitive  page  imbues  with  intellectual 
Bwcctness  every  uncultivated  mind,  like  the  perfumed 
mould  taken  up  by  the  Persian  swimmei'.     "  It  was  but  a 


INFLUENCE   OF   AUTHOllS.  359 

piece  of  common  earth,  but  so  delicate  was  its  fragrance, 
that  he  who  found  it,  in  astonishment  asked  whether  it 
were  musk  or  amber.  'I  am  nothing  but  earth;  but 
roses  were  planted  in  my  soil,  and  their  odorous  virtues 
have  deliciously  penetrated  through  all  my  pores :  I  have 
retained  the  infusion  of  sweetness,  otherwise  I  had  been 
but  a  lump  of  earth  !' " 

I  have  said  that  authors  produce  their  usefulness  in 
privacy,  and  that  their  good  is  not  of  immediate  applica- 
tion, and  often  unvalued  by  their  own  generation.  On 
this  occasion  the  name  of  Evelyn  always  occurs  to  me. 
This  author  supplied  the  public  with  nearly  thirty  works, 
at  a  time  when  taste  and  curiosity  were  not  yet  domicili- 
ated in  our  coimtry ;  his  patriotism  warmed  beyond  the 
eightieth  year  of  his  age,  and  in  liis  dying  hand  lie  held 
another  legacy  for  his  nation,  Evelyn  conveys  a  pleas- 
ing idea  of  his  own  works  and  their  design.  He  first 
taught  his  countrymen  how  to  plant,  then  to  build :  and 
having  taught  them  to  be  useful  icithout  doors,  he  then 
attempted  to  divert  and  occupy  them  within  doors,  by 
his  treatises  on  chalcography,  painting,  medals,  libraries. 
It  was  during  the  days  of  destruction  and  deA^astatiou 
both  of  woods  and  buildings,  the  civil  wars  of  Charles 
the  First,  that  a  solitary  author  was  projecting  to  make 
tlie  nation  delight  in  repairing  their  evil,  by  inspiring 
them  with  the  love  of  agriculture  and  architecture. 
Whether  his  enthusiasm  was  introducing  to  us  a  taste 
for  medals  and  prints,  or  intent  on  purifying  the  city 
from  smoke  and  nuisances,  and  sweetening  it  by  planta- 
tions of  native  plants,  after  having  enriched  our  orchards 
and  our  gardens,  placed  summer-ices  on  our  tables,  and 
varied  even  the  salads  of  our  country;  furnishing  "a 
Gardener's  Kalcndar,"  which,  as  Cowley  said,  was  to  last 
as  long  "  as  months  and  years ;"  whether  the  philosopher 
of  the  Royal  Society,  or  the  lighter  satirist  of  tlie  toilet, 
or  the  fine  moralist  for  active  as  well  as  contemplative 


3 GO  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

life — in  all  these  changes  of  a  studious  life,  the  better  part 
of  his  history  has  not  yet  been  told.  "While  Britain  re- 
tains her  awful  situation  among  the  nations  of  Europe, 
the  "  Sylva  "  of  Evelyn  will  endure  with  her  triumphant 
oaks.  In  the  third  edition  of  that  work  the  heart  of  the 
patriot  expands  at  its  result ;  he  tells  Charles  II.  "  how 
many  millions  of  timber  trees,  besides  infinite  others,  have 
been  propagated  and  planted  at  the  instigation  and  hy 
the  sole  direction  of  this  worhP  It  was  an  author  in 
his  studious  retreat  who,  casting  a  jDrophetic  eye  on  the 
age  we  live  in,  secured  the  late  victories  of  our  naval 
sovereignty.  Inquire  at  the  Admiralty  how  the  fleets  of 
Nelson  have  been  constructed,  and  they  can  tell  you  that 
it  was  with  the  oaks  which  the  genius  of  Evelyn  planted.* 

The  same  character  existed  in  France,  where  De 
Serres,  in  1599,  composed  a  work  on  the  cultivation  of 
mulberry-trees,  in  reference  to  the  art  of  raising  silk- 
worms. He  taught  his  fellow-citizens  to  convert  a  leaf 
into  silk,  and  silk  to  become  the  representative  of  gold. 
Our  author  encountei-ed  the  hostility  of  the  prejudices  of 
his  times,  even  from  Sully,  in  giving  his  country  one  of 
her  staple  commodities ;  but  I  lately  received  a  medal 
recently  struck  in  honour  of  De  Serres  by  the  Agri- 
cultural Society  of  the  Department  of  the  Seine.  We 
sloAvly  commemorate  the  intellectual  characters  of  our 
own  country ;  and  our  men  of  genius  are  still  defrauded 
of  the  debt  we  are  daily  incurring  of  their  posthumous 
fame.  Let  monuments  be  raised  and  let  medals  be 
struck !  They  are  sparks  of  glory  which  might  be 
scattered  through  the  next  age  ! 

There   is  a  singleness  and   unity  in   the   pursuits   of 

♦  Sinco  tliig  wns  first  printed,  the  "  Diary  "  of  Evolj'n  has  appeared; 
and  altlioiif^h  it  could  not  add  to  liis  general  character,  yet  I  was  not 
too  Banguine  in  my  anticipations  of  the  diary  of  so  perfect  a  literary 
character,  who  has  shown  how  his  studios  were  intermingled  with  the 
business  of  life. 


CONSANGUINITY  OF  AUTEORS.  361 

genius  v\  iiicli  is  carried  ou  through  all  ages,  and  will  for 
ever  connect  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Tub  immortality 
OF  Thought  exists  for  Man  !  The  veracity  of 
Herodotus,  after  more  than  two  thousand  years,  is  now 
receiving  a  fresh  confirmation.  The  single  and  precious 
idea  of  genius,  however  obscure,  is  eventually  disclosed ; 
for  original  discoveries  have  often  been  the  developments 
of  former  knowledge.  The  system  of  the  cii-culation 
of  the  blood  appears  to  have  been  obscurely  conjectm-ed 
by  Servetus,  who  wanted  experimental  facts  to  support 
his  hypothesis :  Yesalius  had  an  imperfect  perception  of 
the  right  motion  of  the  blood:  Caesalpinus  admits  a 
circulation  without  comprehending  its  consequences ;  at 
length  our  Harvey,  by  patient  meditation  and  penetra- 
ting sagacity,  removed  the  errors  of  his  predecessors,  and 
demonstrated  the  true  system.  Thus,  too.  Hartley 
expanded  the  hint  of  "  the  association  of  ideas "  from 
Locke,  and  raised  a  system  on  what  Locke  had  only 
used  for  an  accidental  illustration.  The  beautiful  theory 
of  vision  by  Berkeley,  was  taken  up  by  him  just  where 
Locke  had  droj^ped  it :  and  as  Professor  Dugald  Stewart 
describes,  by  following  out  his  principles  to  their  remoter 
consequences,  Berkeley  brought  out  a  doctrine  which  was 
as  true  as  it  seemed  novel.  Lydgate's  "  Fall  of  Princes," 
says  Mr.  Campbell,  "probably  suggested  to  Lord 
Sackville  the  idea  of  his  "  Mirror  for  Magistrates."  The 
"  Mirror  for  Magistrates  "  again  gave  hints  to  Spenser  in 
allegory,  and  may  also  "  have  possibly  suggested  to 
Shakspeare  the  idea  of  his  historical  plays."  When 
indeed  we  find  that  that  great  original,  Hogarth,  adopted 
the  idea  of  his  "  Idle  and  Industrious  Apprentice,"  from 
the  old  comedy  of  Eastward  Soe,  we  easily  conceive 
that  some  of  the  most  original  inventions  of  genius, 
whether  the  more  profound  or  the  more  agreeable,  may 
thus  be  tracked  in  the  snow  of  time. 

In    the    history    of    genius    therefore    there    is    no 


362  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

chronology,  for  to  its  votaries  everything  it  has  done  is 
PRESENT— the  earliest  attempt  stands  connected  with  the 
most  recent.  This  continuity  of  ideas  characterises  the 
human  mind,  and  seems  to  yield  an  anticipation  of  its 
immortal  nature. 

There  is  a  consanguinity  in  the  characters  of  men  of 
genius,  and  a  genealogy  may  be  traced  among  their 
races.  Men  of  genius  in  their  different  classes,  living  at 
distinct  periods,  or  in  remote  countries,  seem  to  reappear 
under  another  name  ;  and  in  this  manner  there  exists  in 
the  literary  character  an  eternal  transmigration.  In  the 
great  march  of  the  human  intellect  the  same  individual 
spirit  seems  still  occupying  the  same  place,  and  is  still 
carrying  on,  with  the  same  powers,  his  great  work 
through  a  line  of  centuries.  It  was  on  this  principle  that 
one  great  poet  has  recently  hailed  his  brother  as  "  the 
Ariosto  of  the  North,"  and  Ariosto  as  "  the  Scott  of  the 
South."  And  can  we  deny  the  real  existence  of  the 
genealogy  of  genius  ?  Copernicus,  Galileo,  Kepler,  and 
Newton  !  this  is  a  single  line  of  descent ! 

Aristotle,  Hobbes,  and  Locke,  Descartes,  and  Newton, 
approximate  more  than  we  imagine.  The  same  chain  of 
intellect  which  Aristotle  holds,  through  the  intervals  of 
time,  is  held  by  them ;  and  links  will  only  be  added  by 
their  successors.  The  naturalists  Pliny,  Gesncr,  Aldrovan- 
dus,  and  Buffon,  derive  differences  in  their  characters 
from  the  spirit  of  the  times ;  but  each  only  made  au 
accession  to  the  family  estate,  while  he  was  the  legitimate 
representative  of  the  family  of  the  naturalists.  Aristo- 
phanes, Moliere,  and  Foote,  are  brothers  of  the  family  of 
national  wits ;  the  wit  of  Aristophanes  was  a  part  of  the 
common  property,  and  Moli6re  and  Foote  were  Aristo- 
plianic.  Plutarch,  La  Mothe  le  Vayer,  and  Bayle,  aliko 
busied  in  amassing  the  materials  of  human  thought  and 
human  action,  with  the  same  vigorous  and  vagrant 
curiosity,  must  liave  had  the  same   habits   of  life.      If 


CONSANGUINITY  OF  GEXIUS.  3G3 

Plutarch  were  credulous,  La  Mothe  Le  Vayer  sceptical, 
aud  Bayle  philosophical,  all  that  can  be  said  is,  tliat 
though  the  heirs  of  the  family  may  differ  in  their 
dispositions,  no  one  will  arraign  the  integrity  of  the  lineal 
descent.  Varre  did  for  the  Romans  what  Pausanias  had 
done  for  the  Greeks,  and  Montfaucon  for  the  French,  and 
Camden  for  ourselves. 

My  learned  and  reflecting  friend,  whose  original  re* 
searches  have  enriched  our  national  history,  has  this 
observation  on  the  character  of  Wicklifie : — "  To  com- 
plete our  idea  of  the  importance  of  WickliiFe,  it  is  only 
necessary  to  add,  that  as  his  writings  made  John  Huss 
the  reformer  of  Bohemia,  so  the  writings  of  John  Huss 
led  Martin  Luther  to  be  the  reformer  of  Germany ;  so 
extensive  and  so  incalculable  are  the  consequences  Avhich 
sometimes  follow  from  human  actions."*  Our  historian 
has  accompanied  this  by  giving  the  very  feelings  of 
Luther  in  early  life  on  his  first  perusal  of  the  works  of 
John  Huss ;  we  see  the  sjjark  of  creation  caught  at  the 
moment :  a  striking  influence  of  the  generation  of  char- 
acter !  Thus  a  father-spirit  has  many  sons ;  and  several 
of  the  great  revolutions  in  the  history  of  man  have  been 
carried  on  by  that  secret  creation  of  minds  visibly  oper- 
ating on  human  afiairs.  In  the  history  of  the  human 
mind,  he  takes  an  imperfect  view,  who  is  confined  to 
contemporary  knowledge,  as  well  as  he  who  stops  short 
with  the  Ancients.  Those  who  do  not  carry  researches 
through  the  genealogical  lines  of  genius,  mutilate  their 
minds. 

Such,  then,  is  the  influence  of  Authoks  ! — those  "  great 
lights  of  the  world,"  by  whom  the  torch  of  genius  has 
been  successively  seized  and  pei-petually  transferred  from 
hand  to  hand,  in  the  fleeting  scene.  Descartes  delivers 
it  to  Newton,  Bacon  to  Locke ;  and  the  continuity  of 
human  affairs,  through  the  rapid  generations  of  man,  is 
maintamed  from  age  to  age ! 

*  Turner's  "  History  of  Englan"!,"  voi.  ii.,  p.  432. 


LITERARY  MISCELLANIES. 


LITERARY  MISCELLANIES. 


MISCELLANISTS. 

MISCELLANISTS  are  the  most  popular  writers 
among  every  people ;  for  it  is  they  who  form  a 
communication  between  the  learned  and  the  imlearned, 
and,  as  it  were,  throw  a  bridge  between  those  two  great 
divisions  of  the  public.  Literary  Miscellanies  are  classed 
among  philological  studies.  The  studies  of  philology 
formerly  consisted  rather  of  the  labours  of  arid  gram- 
mi  Tians  and  conjectural  critics,  than  of  that  more  elegant 
philosophy  which  has,  within  our  own  time,  been  intro- 
duced into  literature,  and  which,  by  its  graces  and  inves- 
tigation, augment  the  beauties  of  original  genius.  This 
delightful  province  has  been  tei-med  in  Germany  the 
Esthetic,  from  a  Greek  term  signifying  sentiment  or 
feeling.  Esthetic  critics  fathom  the  depths,  or  run  with 
the  current  of  an  aiithor's  thoughts,  and  the  symi^athies 
of  such  a  critic  offer  a  supplement  to  the  genius  of  the 
original  Avriter.  Longinus  and  Addison  are  .Esthetic 
critics.  The  critics  of  the  adverse  school  always  look 
for  a  precedent,  and  if  none  is  found,  woe  to  the  origin- 
ality of  a  great  writer  ! 

Very  elaborate  criticisms  have  been  foraied  by  eminent 
writers,  in  which  great  learning  and  acute  logic  have  only 
betrayed  the  absence  of  the  _5^sthetic  faculty.  Warbur- 
ton  called  Addison  an  empty  superficial  writer,  destitute 
himself  of  an  atom  of  Addison's  taste  for  the  beautiful; 
and  Johnson  is  a  flagrant  instance  that  great  powers  of 


568  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

reasoning  are  more  fatal  to  the  works  of  imagination 
than  had  ever  been  suspected. 

By  one  of  these  learned  critics  was  Montaigne,  the 
venerable  father  of  modern  Miscellanies,  called  "  a  bold 
isrnorant  fellow."  To  thinkinoc  readers,  this  critical 
summary  will  appear  mysterious;  for  Montaigne  had 
imbibed  the  spirit  of  all  the  moral  writers  of  antiquity ; 
and  although  he  has  made  a  capricious  complaint  of  a 
defective  memory,  we  cannot  but  wish  the  complaint  had 
been  more  real ;  for  we  discover  in  his  works  such  a 
gathering  of  knowledge  that  it  seems  at  times  to  stifle 
his  own  energies.  IMontaigne  was  censured  by  Scaliger, 
as  Addison  was  censured  by  Wai'burton ;  because  both, 
like  Socrates,  smiled  at  that  mere  erudition  which  con- 
sists of  knowing  the  thoughts  of  others  and  having  no 
thoughts  of  our  own.  To  weigh  syllables,  and  to  arrange 
dates,  to  adjust  texts,  and  to  heap  annotations,  has  gener- 
ally proved  the  absence  of  the  higher  faculties.  When 
a  more  adventurous  spirit  of  this  herd  attempts  some 
novel  discovery,  often  men  of  taste  behold,  with  indig- 
nation, the  perversions  of  their  understanding;  and  a 
Bentley  in  his  JNIilton,  or  a  Warburton  on  a  Virgil,  had 
either  a  singular  imbecility  concealed  under  the  arro- 
gance of  the  scholar,  or  they  did  not  believe  Avhat  they 
told  the  ])ublic  ;  the  one  in  his  extraordinary  invention 
of  an  interpolating  editor,  and  the  other  in  his  more 
extraordinary  explanation  of  the  Eleusinian  mysteries. 
But  what  was  still  worse,  the  froth  of  the  head  became 
venom,  when  it  reached  the  heart. 

]\Iontaigne  has  also  been  censured  for  an  apparent 
vanity,  in  making  himself  the  idol  of  his  lucubrations. 
If  he  had  not  done  this,  he  had  not  performed  the  prom- 
ise lie  makes  at  the  commencement  of  liis  preface.  An 
engaging  tenderness  prevails  in  these  ncuve  expressions 
which  shall  not  be  injured  by  a  version.  "  Je  Pay  voue 
a  la  commodito  particuliere  de  mes  parens  ct  amis ;  a  co 


MISCELLANISTS.  3G9 

que  m'ayans  perJu  (ce  qu'ils  ont  a  faire  bientost)  ils  y 
puissent  retrouver  quelques  traicts  de  mes  humeurs,  et 
que  par  ce  moyen  ils  nourrissent  plus  enti^re  et  plus  vifue 
la  conoissance  qu'ils  ont  eu  de  moi." 

Those  authors  who  appear  sometimes  to  forget  tlioy 
are  writers,  and  remember  they  are  men,  will  be  our 
fiiYOurites.  lie  who  writes  from  the  heai-t,  will  write  to 
the  heart ;  every  one  is  enabled  to  decide  on  his  merits, 
and  they  will  not  be  referred  to  learned  heads,  or  a  dis- 
tant day.  "Why,"  says  Boileau,  "  are  my  verses  read 
read  by  all?  it  is  only  because  they  speak  truths,  and 
that  I  am  convinced  of  the  truths  I  write." 

Why  have  some  of  our  fine  writers  interested  more 
than  others,  who  have  not  displayed  inferior  talents? 
Why  is  Addison  still  the  first  of  our  essayists  ?  he  has 
sometimes  been  excelled  in  criticisms  more  philosophical, 
in  topics  more  interesting,  and  in  diction  more  coloured. 
But  there  is  a  personal  charm  in  the  character  he  has 
assumed  in  his  periodical  Miscellanies,  which  is  felt  with 
such  a  gentle  force,  that  we  scarce  advert  to  it.  He  has 
painted  forth  his  little  humours,  his  individual  feelings, 
and  eternised  himself  to  his  readers.  Johnson  and 
Hawkesworth  we  receive  with  respect,  and  we  dismiss 
with  awe ;  we  come  from  their  writings  as  from  public 
lectures,  and  from  Addison's  as  from  private  conversa- 
tions. Montaigne  preferred  those  of  the  ancients,  who 
appear  to  write  under  a  conviction  of  what  they  said ; 
the  eloquent  Cicero  declaims  but  coldly  on  liberty,  while 
in  the  impetuous  Brutus  may  be  perceived  a  man  who  is 
resolved  to  purchase  it  with  his  life.  We  know  little  of 
Plutarch ;  yet  a  spirit  of  honesty  and  persuasion  in  his 
works  expresses  a  philosophical  character  capable  of 
imitating,  as  well  as  admiring,  the  virtues  he  records. 

Sterne  perhaps  derives  a  portion  of  his  celebrity  from 
the  same  influence  ;  he  interests  us  in  his  minutest  mo- 
tions, for  he  tells  us  all  he  feels.  Richardson  was  sensi- 
2i 


370  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

ble  of  the  power  with  which  these  minute  stroTces  of 
description  enter  the  heart,  and  which  are  so  many  fast- 
enings to  which  the  imagination  clings.  He  says,  "  If  I 
give  speeches  and  conversations,  I  ought  to  give  them 
jitstly ;  for  the  humours  and  characters  of  persons  cannot 
be  known,  unless  I  repeat  ichat  they  saj%  and  their  man- 
ner of  saying."  I  confess  I  am  infinitely  j^leased  when 
Sir  William  Temple  acquaints  us  with  the  size  of  his 
orange-trees,  and  with  the  flavour  of  his  peaches  and 
grapes,  confessed  by  Frenchmen  to  equal  those  of  France  ; 
with  his  having  had  the  honour  to  naturalise  in  this 
country  four  kinds  of  grapes,  with  his  liberal  distribution 
of  them,  because  "he  ever  thought  all  things  of  this  kind 
the  commoner  they  are  the  better."  In  a  word,  with  his 
passionate  attachment  to  his  garden,  where  he  desired  his 
heart  to  be  buried,  of  his  desire  to  escape  from  great  em- 
ploj^ments,  and  having  passed  five  years  without  going 
to  town,  where,  by  the  way,  "  he  had  a  large  house  al- 
ways ready  to  receive  him."  Dryden  has  interspersed 
many  of  these  little  particulars  in  his  prosaic  compositions, 
and  I  think  that  his  character  and  dispositions  may  be 
more  correctly  acquired  by  iiniting  these  scattered  no- 
tices, than  by  any  biographical  account  which  can  noAV 
be  given  of  this  man  of  geniiis. 

From  this  agreeable  mode  of  writing,  a  species  of  com- 
positions may  be  discriminated,  which  seems  above  all 
others  to  identify  the  reader  with  the  writer ;  composi- 
tions which  are  often  discovered  in  a  fugitive  state,  but  to 
which  their  authors  were  prompted  by  the  fine  impulses 
of  genius,  derived  from  the  peculiarity  of  their  situation. 
Dictated  by  the  heart,  or  polished  with  the  fondness  of 
delight,  these  productions  are  impressed  by  the  seductive 
eloquence  of  genius,  or  attach  us  by  the  sensibility  of 
taste.  The  object  thus  selected  is  no  task  imposed  on 
the  mind  of  the  writer  for  the  mere  ambition  of  litera- 
ture, but  is  a  voluntary  effusion,  warm  with  all  the  sensa- 


I 


MISCELLANISTS.  371 

tions  of  a  pathetic  writer.  In  a  word,  they  are  the  com- 
positions of  genius,  on  a  subject  in  which  it  is  most  deeply 
interested ;  which  it  revolves  on  all  its  sides,  which  it 
])aints  in  all  its  tints,  and  which  it  finishes  with  the  same 
ardour  it  began.  Among  such  works  may  be  placed  the 
exiled  Bolingbroke's  "  Reflections  upon  Exile  ;"  the  re- 
tired Petrarch  and  Zimmerman's  Essays  on  "  Solitude ;" 
the  imprisoned  Boethius's  "  Consolations  of  Philosophy ;" 
the  oppressed  Pierius  Valerianus's  Catalogue  of"  Literary 
Calamities ;"  the  deformed  Hay's  Essay  on  "  Deformity ;" 
the  projecting  De  Foe's  "  Essays  on  Projects ;"  the  lib- 
eral Shenstone's  Poem  on  "  Economy." 

We  may  respect  the  profound  genius  of  voluminous 
writers ;  they  are  a  kind  of  painters  who  occupy  great 
room,  and  fill  np,  as  a  satirist  expresses  it,  "  an  acre  of 
canvas."  But  we  love  to  dwell  on  those  more  delicate 
pieces, — a  group  of  Cupids  ;  a  Venus  emerging  from  the 
waA-es ;  a  Psyche  or  an  Aglaia,  which  embellish  the  cabi- 
net of  the  man  of  taste. 

It  should,  indeed,  be  the  characteristic  of  good  Miscel- 
lanies, to  be  multifarious  and  concise.  Usbek,  the  Per- 
sian of  Montesquieu,  is  one  of  the  profoundcst  philoso- 
phers, his  letters  are,  however,  but  concise  pages.  Roche- 
foucault  and  La  Bruyere  are  not  superficial  observers  of 
human  nature,  although  they  have  only  written  sentences. 
Of  Tacitus  it  has  been  finely  remarked  by  Montesquieu, 
that  "he  abridged  everything  because  he  saw  everything." 
Montaigne  approves  of  Plutarch  and  Seneca,  because  their 
loose  papers  were  suited  to  his  dispositions,  and  where 
knowledge  is  acquired  without  a  tedious  study.  "  It  is," 
'said  he,  "  no  great  attempt  to  take  one  in  hand,  and  I 
give  over  at  pleasure,  for  they  have  no  sequel  or  con- 
nexion." La  Fontaine  agreeably  applauds  short  com- 
positions : 

Les  longs  ouvrages  me  font  peur; 

Loin  d'epuiser  une  matiere, 

Oa  n'en  doit  prendre  que  la  fleur ; 


372.  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

and  Old  Francis  Osborne  lias  a  coarse  and  ludicrous 
image  in  favour  of  such  opuscula  ;  he  says,  "  Huge  vol- 
umes, like  the  ox  roasted  whole  at  Bartholomew  fair,  may 
proclaim  plenty  of  labour  and  invention,  but  afford  less 
of  what  is  delicate,  savoury,  and  well  concocted,  than 
smaller  piecesP  To  quote  so  light  a  genius  as  the  en- 
chanting; La  Fontaine,  and  so  solid  a  mind  as  the  sensible 
Osborne,  is  taking  in  all  the  climates  of  the  human  mind ; 
it  is  touching  at  the  equator,  and  pushing  on  to  the  pole. 

Montaigne's  works  have  been  called  by  a  cardinal 
"  The  Breviary  of  Idlers."  It  is  therefore  the  book  of 
man  ;  for  all  men  are  idlers  ;  we  have  hours  which  we 
pass  with  lamentation,  and  which  we  know  are  always 
returning.  At  those  moments  miscellanists  are  conform- 
able to  all  our  humours.  We  dart  along  their  airy  and 
concise  page  ;  and  their  lively  anecdote  or  their  profound 
observation  are  so  many  interstitial  pleasures  in  our  list- 
less hours. 

The  ancients  were  great  admirers  of  miscellanies  ;  Au- 
lus  Gellius  has  preserved  a  copioias  list  of  titles  of  such 
works.  These  titles  are  so  numerous,  and  include  such 
gay  and  j^leasing  descriptions,  that  we  may  infer  by  their 
number  that  they  were  greatly  admired  by  the  piiblic, 
and  by  their  titles  that  they  prove  the  great  delight  their 
authors  experienced  in  their  composition.  Among  the 
titles  are  "  a  basket  of  flowers  ;"  "  an  embroidered  man- 
tle ;"  and  "  a  variegated  meadow."  Such  a  miscellanist 
as  was  the  admirable  Erasmus  deserves  the  happy  de- 
scription which  Plutarch  with  an  elegant  enthusiasm 
bestows  on  Menander :  he  calls  him  the  delight  of  phi- 
losophers fatigued  with  study  ;  that  they  have  recourse ' 
to  his  works  as  to  a  meadow  enamelled  with  flowers, 
where  the  sense  is  delighted  by  a  purer  air ;  and  very 
elegantly  adds,  that  Menander  has  a  salt  peculiar  to  him- 
self, drawn  from  the  same  waters  that  gave  birth  to 
Venus. 


PREFACES.  373 

The  TrouLadours,  Conteurs,  and  Jongleurs,  practised 
what  is  yet  called  in  the  southern  parts  of  France,  Le 
guay  Saber,  or  the  gay  science.  I  consider  these  as  the 
]Vliscellanists  of  their  day;  they  had  their  grave  morali- 
ties, their  tragical  histories,  and  their  sportive  tales; 
their  verse  and  their  prose.  The  village  was  in  motion 
at  their  approach  ;  the  castle  was  opened  to  the  ambu- 
latory poets,  and  the  feudal  hypochondriac  listened  to 
their  solemn  instruction  and  their  airy  fancy.  I  would 
call  miscellaneous  composition  Le  guay  Saber,  and  I 
would  have'  every  miscellaneous  writer  as  solemn  and  as 
gay,  as  various  and  as  pleasing,  as  these  lively  artists  of 
versatility. 

Nature  herself  is  most  delightful  in  her  miscellaneous 
scenes.  When  I  hold  a  volume  of  miscellanies,  and  run 
over  with  avidity  the  titles  of  its  contents,  my  mind  is 
enchanted,  as  if  it  were  placed  among  the  landscapes  of 
Valais,  which  Rousseau  has  described  with  such  pictur- 
esque beauty.  I  fancy  myself  seated  in  a  cottage  amid 
those  mountains,  those  valleys,  those  rocks,  encircled  by 
the  enchantments  of  optical  illusion.  I  look,  and  behold 
at  once  the  united  seasons — "  All  climates  in  one  place, 
all  seasons  in  one  instant."  I  gaze  at  once  on  a  hundred 
rainbows,  and  trace  the  romantic  figures  of  the  shifting 
clouds.  I  seem  to  be  in  a  temple  dedicated  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  Goddess  Variety. 


PREFACES, 

I  DECLARE  myself  infinitely  delighted  by  a  preface.  Is 
it  exquisitely  written  ?  no  literary  morsel  is  more  deli- 
cious. Is  the  author  inveterately  dull  ?  it  is  a  kind  of 
prejoaratory  information,  which  may  be  very  useful.  It 
argues  a  deficiency  in  taste  to  turn  over  an  elaborate 


374  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

preface  unread  ;  for  it  is  the  attar  of  the  author's  rof-es  ; 
every  drop  distilled  at  an  immense  cost.  It  is  the  reason 
of  the  reasoning,  and  the  folly  of  the  foolish. 

I  do  not  wish,  however,  to  conceal  that  several  writers, 
as  well  as  readers,  have  spoken  very  disrespectfully  of 
this  species  of  literature.  That  fine  writer  Montesquieu, 
in  closing  the  pi*eface  to  his  "  Persian  Letters,"  says,  "  I 
do  not  praise  my  '  Persians  ;'  because  it  would  be  a  very 
tedious  thing,  put  in  a  place  already  very  tedioiis  of  it- 
self; I  mean  a  preface."  Spence,  in  the  preface  to  his 
"  Polymetis,"  inform  us,  that  "  there  is  not  any  sort  of 
wi'iting  which  he  sits  down  to  with  so  much  unwilling- 
ness as  that  of  prefaces  ;  and  as  he  believes  most  people 
are  not  much  fonder  of  reading  them  than  he  is  of  writing 
them,  he  shall  get  over  this  as  fast  as  he  can."  Pelissoii 
warmly  pi'otested  against  prefatory  composition ;  but 
when  he  jjublished  the  works  of  Sarrasin,  was  wise  enough 
to  compose  a  very  pleasing  one.  He,  indeed,  endeavoured 
to  justify  himself  for  acting  against  his  own  opinions, 
by  this  ingenious  excuse,  that,  like  funeral  honours,  it  is 
proper  to  show  the  utmost  regard  for  them  when  given 
to  others,  but  to  be  inattentive  to  them  for  ourselves. 

Notwithstanding  all  this  evidence,  I  have  some  good 
reasons  for  admiring  prefaces  ;  and  barren  as  the  investi- 
gation may  appear,  some  literary  amusement  can  be 
gathered. 

In  the  first  place,  I  observe  that  a  prefaccr  is  generally 
a  most  accomplished  liar.  Is  an  author  to  be  introduced 
to  the  public  ?  the  preface  is  as  genuine  a  panegyric, 
and  nearly  as  long  a  one,  as  that  of  Pliny's  on  the  Em- 
peror Trajan.  Such  a  preface  is  ringing  an  alarum  boll 
for  an  author.  If  we  look  closer  into  the  characters  of 
those  masters  of  ceremony,  who  thus  sport  Avith  and  defy 
the  judgment  of  their  reader,  and  who,  by  their  extrava- 
gant panegyric,  do  considerable  injury  to  the  cause  of 
taste,  we  discover  that  some  accidental  occurrence  has 


PREFACES.  375 

occasioned  this  vehement  affection  for  the  autlior,  and 
which,  like  that  of  anotlier  kind  of  love,  makes  one  com- 
mit so  many  extravagances. 

Prefaces  are  indeed  rarely  sincere.  It  is  justly  ob- 
served by  Shenstone,  in  his  prefatory  Essay  to  the 
"  Elegies,"  that  "  discourses  prefixed  to  poetry  inculcate 
such  tenets  as  may  exhibit  the  performance  to  the  great- 
est advantage.  The  fabric  is  first  raised,  and  the  meas- 
i;res  by  which  we  are  to  judge  of  it  are  afterwards  ad- 
justed." This  observation  might  be  exemplified  by  moi-e 
instances  than  some  readers  might  choose  to  read.  It 
will  be  sufficient  to  observe  with  what  art  both  Pope  and 
Fontenelle  liave  drawn  np  their  Essays  on  the  nature  of 
Pastoral  Poetry,  that  the  rules  they  wished  to  establish 
might  be  adapted  to  their  own  pastorals.  Has  accident 
made  some  ingenious  student  apply  himself  to  a  subor- 
dinate branch  of  literature,  or  to  some  science  which  is 
not  highly  esteemed — look  in  the  preface  for  its  sublime 
panegyric.  Collectors  of  coins,  dresses,  and  butterflies, 
have  astonished  the  world  with  eulogiums  which  would 
raise  their  particular  studies  into  the  first  ranks  of 
philosophy. 

It  would  appear  that  there  is  no  lie  to  which  a  prefacer 
is  not  tempted.  I  pass  over  the  commodious  prefaces  of 
Dryden,  which  were  ever  adapted  to  the  poem  and  not 
to  poetry,  to  the  author  and  not  to  literature. 

The  boldest  preface-liar  was  Aldus  Manutius,  Avho, 
having  printed  an  edition  of  Aristophanes,  first  published 
in  the  preface  that  Saint  Chrysostom  was  accustomed  to 
place  this  comic  poet  under  his  pillow,  that  he  might 
always  have  his  works  at  hand.  As,  in  that  age,  a  saint 
was  supposed  to  possess  every  human  talent,  good  taste 
not  excepted,  Aristophanes  thus  recommended  became 
a  general  fiivourite.  The  anecdote  lasted  for  nearly  two 
centuries  ;  and  what  was  of  greater  consequence  to  Al- 
dus, quickened  the  sale  of  his  Aristophanes.     This  iuge- 


376  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

nioiis  invention  of  the  prefacer  of  Aristophanes  at  length 
was  detected  by  Menage. 

The  insincerity  of  prefaces  arises  whenever  an  author 
would  disguise  his  solicitude  for  his  work,  hy  appearing 
negligent,  and  even  undesirous  of  its  siiccess.  A  writer 
will  rarely  conclude  such  a  preface  withoiit  betraying 
himself  I  think  that  even  Dx-.  Johnson  forgot  his  sound 
dialectic  in  the  admirable  Preface  to  his  Dictionary.  In 
one  part  he  says,  "  having  laboured  this  work  with  so 
much  application,  I  cannot  but  have  some  degree  of  pa- 
rental fondness."  But  in  his  conclusion  he  tells  us,  "  I 
dismiss  it  with  frigid  tranquillity,  having  little  to  fear  or 
hope  from  censure  or  from  praise."  I  deny  the  doctor's 
"  frigidity."  This  polished  period  exhibits  an  affected 
stoicism,  which  no  writer  ever  felt  for  the  anxious  labour 
of  a  great  portion  of  life,  addressed  not  merely  to  a  class 
of  readers,  but  to  literary  Europe. 

But  if  prefaces  are  rarely  sincere  or  just,  they  are,  not- 
withstanding, literary  opuscula  in  which  the  author  is 
materially  concerned.  A  work  with  a  poor  preface,  like 
a  person  who  comes  with  an  indifferent  recommendation, 
must  display  uncommon  merit  to  master  our  prejudices, 
and  to  i^lease  us,  as  it  were,  in  spite  of  ourselves.  Works 
ornamented  by  a  finished  preface,  such  as  Johnson  not 
infrequently  presented  to  his  friends  or  his  booksellei-s, 
inspire  us  with  awe  ;  we  observe  a  veteran  guard  placed 
in  the  porch,  and  we  are  induced  to  conclude  from  this 
appearance  that  some  person  of  eminence  resides  in  the 
place  itself. 

Tlie  public  are  treated  with  contempt  when  an  author 
professes  to  publish  his  puerilities.  This  Warburton  did, 
in  his  pompous  edition  of  Shakspcare.  In  the  preface  he 
informed  the  public,  that  his  notes  "  were  among  his 
younf/er  amnsements,  when  he  turned  over  these  sort  of 
writers^  Tliis  ungracious  compliment  to  Shakspcare  and 
the  public,  merited  that  perfect  scourging  wliich    our 


PREFACES.  '  377 

hauglit}'  commentator  received  from  the  sarcastic 
"  Canons  of  Criticism."*  Scudery  was  a  writer  of  some 
genius,  and  great  variety.  His  prefaces  are  remarkable 
for  their  gasconades.  In  his  epic  poem  of  Alaric,  he 
Bays,  "  I  have  such  a  facility  in  writing  verses,  aud  also 
in  my  invention,  that  a  poem  of  double  its  length  would 
have  cost  me  little  trouble.  Although  it  contains  only 
eleven  thousand  lines,  I  believe  that  longer  epics  do  not 
exhibit  more  embellishments  than  mine."  And  to  con- 
clude with  one  more  student  of  this  class,  Amelot  de  la 
Iloussaie,  in  the  preface  to  his  translation  of  "  The  Prince" 
of  Machiavel,  instructs  us,  that  "  he  considers  his  copy 
as  superior  to  the  original,  because  it  is  everywhere  in- 
telligible, and  Machiavel  is  frequently  obscure."  I  have 
seen  in  the  playbills  of  strollers,  a  very  pompous  descrip- 
tion of  the  triumphant  entry  of  Alexander  into  Babylon  ; 
had  they  said  nothing  about  the  triumph,  it  might  have 
passed  without  exciting  ridicule  ;  and  one  might  not  so 
maliciously  have  perceived  how  ill  the  four  candle-snuffers 
crawled  as  elephants,  and  the  triumphal  car  discovered 
its  want  of  a  lid.  But  having  pre-excited  attention,  we 
had  full  leisure  to  sharpen  our  eye.  To  these  imprudent 
authors  and  actors  we  may  apply  a  Spanish  proverb, 
which  has  the  peculiar  quaintness  of  that  people,  Aviendo 
pregonado  vino,  venden  vinagre :  "  Having  cried  up  their 
wine,  they  sell  us  vinegar." 

A  ridiculous  humility  in  a  preface  is  not  less  despica- 
ble. Many  idle  apologies  were  formerly  in  vogue  for 
publication,  and  formed  a  literary  cant,  of  which  now 
the  meanest  writers  perceive  the  futility.  A  literary 
anecdote  of  the  Romans  has  been  preserved,  which  is 
sufficiently  curious.  One  Albinus,  in  the  preface  to  his 
Roman  History,  intercedes  for  pardon  for  his  numerous 
blunders  of  phraseology ;  observing  that  they  were  the 

*  See  the  essay  on  'Warburton  and  his  disputes  in  "Quarrels  of 
Authors." — Ed. 


378  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

more  excusable,  as  he  had  composed  his  history  in  the 
Greek  language,  with  which  he  was  not  so  familiar  as  his 
maternal  tongue.  Cato  severely  rallies  him  on  this ;  and 
justly  obsei'ves,  that  our  Albinus  had  merited  the  pardon 
he  solicits,  if  a  decree  of  the  senate  had  compelled  him 
thus  to  have  composed  it,  and  he  could  not  have  obtained 
a  dispensation.  The  avowal  of  our  ignorance  of  the 
language  we  employ  is  like  that  excuse  which  some 
writers  make  for  composing  on  topics  in  which  they  are 
little  conversant.  A  reader's  heart  is  not  so  easily  molli- 
fied ;  and  it  is  a  melancholy  truth  for  literary  men  that 
the  pleasure  of  abusing  an  author  is  generally  superior 
to  that  of  admiring  him.  One  appears  to  display  more 
critical  acumen  than  the  other,  by  showing  that  though 
we  do  not  choose  to  take  the  trouble  of  writing,  we  have 
infinitely  more  genius  than  the  author.  These  suppliant 
prefacers  are  described  by  Boileau. 

Uu  auteur  a  genoux  dans  line  humble  preface 
Au  lecteur  qu'il  ennuie  a  beau  demander  grace ; 
II  ne  gagaera  rien  sur  ce  juge  irrite, 
Qui  lui  fait  son  proces  de  pleine  autorite. 

Low  in  a  humble  preface  authors  kneel ; 
In  vain,  the  wearied  reader's  heart  is  steeL 
Callous,  that  irritated  judge  with  awe, 
Inflicts  the  penalties  and  arms  the  law. 

The  most  entertaining  prefaces  in  our  language  are 
those  of  Dryden ;  and  thougli  it  is  ill-naturedly  said,  by- 
Swift,  that  they  were  merely  formed 

To  raise  the  volume's  price  a  shilling, 

yet  these  were  tlie  earliest  commencements  of  English 
criticism,  and  the  first  attempt  to  restrain  the  capricious- 
ness  of  readers,  and  to  form  a  national  taste.  Dryden 
has  had  the  candour  to  acquaint  us  with  his  secret  of 
prefatory  composition ;  for  in  that  one  to  liis  Tales  ho 
says,  "  the  nature  of  preface-writing  is  rambling ;  never 


PREFACES.  379 

Avholly  oxit  of  the  way,  nor  in  it.  This  I  have  learnt 
from  the  practice  of  honest  Montaigne."  There  is  no 
great  risk  in  establishing  this  obsei'vation  as  an  axiom  in 
literature  ;  for  should  a  prefacer  loiter,  it  is  never  diffi- 
cult to  get  rid  of  lame  persons,  by  escaping  from  them ; 
and  the  reader  may  malce  a  preface  as  concise  as  he 
chooses. 

It  is  possible  for  an  author  to  paint  himself  in  amiable 
colours,  in  this  useful  page,  without  incurring  the  con- 
tempt of  egotism.  After  a  writer  has  rendered  himself 
conspicuous  by  his  industry  or  his  genius,  his  admirers 
are  not  displeased  to  hear  something  relative  to  him  from 
himself  Hayley,  in  the  preface  to  his  poems,  has  con- 
veyed an  amiable  feature  in  his  personal  character,  by 
giving  the  cause  of  his  devotion  to  literature  as  the  only 
mode  by  which  he  could  render  himself  of  some  utility 
to  his  country.  There  is  a  modesty  in  the  prefaces  of 
Pope,  even  when  this  great  poet  collected  his  immortal 
works ;  and  in  several  other  writers  of  the  most  elevated 
genius,  in  a  Hume  and  a  Robertson,  which  becomes  their 
happy  successors  to  imitate,  and  inferior  wiiters  to  con- 
template with  awe. 

There  is  in  prefaces  a  due  respect  to  be  shown  to  the 
public  and  to  ourselves.  He  that  has  no  sense  of  self- 
dignity,  will  not  inspire  any  reverence  in  others ;  and  the 
ebriety  of  vanity  will  be  sobered  by  the  alacrity  we  all 
feel  in  disturbing  the  dreams  of  self-love.  If  we  dare 
not  attempt  the  rambling  prefaces  of  a  Dryden,  we  may 
still  entertain  the  reader,  and  soothe  him  into  good-humour 
for  our  own  interest.  This,  perhaps,  will  be  best  ob- 
tained by  making  the  preface  (like  the  symphony  to  an 
opera)  to  contain  something  analogous  to  the  work  itself, 
to  attune  the  mind  into  a  harmony  of  tone.* 

*  See  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  voL  i.,  for  an  article  on  Prefaces 


880  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 


STYLE. 

Evert  period  of  literature  has  its  peculiar  style,  derived 
from  some  author  of  ref)utation ;  and  the  histoi-y  of  a 
language,  as  an  object  of  taste,  might  be  traced  through 
a  collection  of  ample  quotations  from  the  most  celebrated 
authors  of  each  period. 

To  Johnson  may  be  atti*ibuted  the  establishment  of 
our  present  refinement,  and  it  is  with  truth  he  observes 
of  his  "  Kambler,"  "  That  he  had  laboured  to  refine  our 
language  to  grammatical  purity,  and  to  clear  it  from 
colloquial  barbarisms,  licentious  idioms,  and  irregular 
combinations,  and  that  he  has  added  to  the  elegance  of 
its  construction  and  to  the  harmony  of  its  cadence."  In 
this  description  of  his  own  refinement  in  style  and  gram- 
matical accuracy,  Johnson  probably  alluded  to  the  happy 
carelessness  of  Addison,  whose  charm  of  natural  ease 
long  afterwards  he  discovered.  But  great  inelegance  of 
diction  disgraced  our  language  even  so  late  as  in  1736, 
when  the  "  Inquiry  into  the  Life  of  Homer "  was  pub- 
lished. That  author  was  certainly  desirous  of  all  the 
graces  of  composition,  and  his  volume  by  its  singular 
sculptures  evinces  his  inordinate  afiection  for  his  w^ork. 
Tliis  fanciful  writer  had  a  taste  for  polished  writing,  yet 
he  abounds  in  expressions  which  now  would  be  consid- 
ered as  impure  in  literary  composition.  Such  vulgarisms 
are  common — the  Greeks  fell  to  their  old  trade  of  one 
tribe  expelling  another — the  scene  is  always  at  Athens, 
and  all  the  pother  is  some  little  jilting  story — the  haughty 
Roman  snuffed  at  the  suppleness.  If  such  diction  had 
not  been  usual  with  good  wa-iters  at  that  period,  I  should 
not  have  quoted  Blackwall.  Middleton,  in  his  "Life  of 
Cicero,"  though  a  man  of  classical  taste,  and  an  historian 
of  a  classical  era,  could  not  preserve  himself  from  collo- 
quial inelegances  j  the  greatest  characters  are  levelled  by 


STYLE.  381 

the  poverty  of  his  style,  Warburton,  and  his  imitator 
Hurd,  and  other  living  critics  of  that  school,  are  loaded 
with  familiar  idioms,  which  at  present  would  debase  even 
the  style  of  conversation. 

Such  was  the  influence  of  the  elaborate  novelty  of 
Johnson,  that  every  writer  in  every  class  servilely  copied 
the  Latinised  style,  ludicrously  mimicking  the  contor- 
tions and  re-echoing  the  sonorous  nothings  of  our  great 
lexicographer ;  the  novelist  of  domestic  life,  or  the  agri- 
cultm-ist  in  a  treatise  on  turnips,  alike  aimed  at  the  poly- 
syllabic force,  and  the  csidenced  period.  Such  was  the 
condition  of  English  style  for  more  than  twenty  years. 

Some  argue  in  favour  of  a  natural  style,  and  reiterate 
the  opinion  of  many  great  critics  that  proper  ideas  will 
be  accompanied  by  proper  words  ;  but  though  supported 
by  the  first  authorities,  they  are  not  perhaps  sufiiciently 
precise  in  their  definition.  Writers  may  think  justly,  and 
yet  write  without  any  effect ;  while  a  splendid  style  may 
cover  a  vacuity  of  thought.  Does  not  this  evident  fact 
prove  that  style  and  thinking  have  not  that  inseparable 
connexion  which  many  great  wi'iters  have  pronounced  ? 
Milton  imagined  that  beautiful  thoughts  produce  beauti- 
ful expression.     He  says, 

Then  feed  on  thoughts  that  voluntary  move 
Harmouious  numbers. 

Writing  is  justly  called  an  art ;  and  Rousseau  says,  it  is 
not  an  art  easily  acquired.  Thinking  may  be  the  founda- 
tion of  style,  but  it  is  not  the  superstructure ;  it  is  the 
marble  of  the  edifice,  but  not  its  architecture.  The  art 
of  presenting  our  thoughts  to  another,  is  often  a  process 
of  considerable  time  and  labour ;  and  the  delicate  task 
of  correction,  in  the  development  of  ideas,  is  reserved 
only  for  writers  of  fine  taste.  There  are  several  modes 
of  presenting  an  idea ;  vulgar  readers  are  only  suscepti- 
ble of  the  strong  and  palpable  stroke:  but  there  are 


382  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

many  shades  of  sentiment,  which  to  seize  on  and  to  paint 
is  the  pride  and  the  labour  of  a  skilful  writer.  A  beau- 
tiful simplicity  itself  is  a  species  of  refinement,  and  no 
writer  more  solicitously  coi'rected  his  works  than  Hume, 
who  excels  in  this  mode  of  composition.  The  philoso- 
pher highly  approves  of  Addison's  definition  of  fine 
writing,  who  says,  that  it  consists  of  sentiments  which 
are  natural,  without  being  obvious.  This  is  a  definition 
of  thought  rather  than  of  composition.  Shenstone  has 
hit  the  truth ;  for  fine  writing  he  defines  to  be  generally 
the  effect  of  spontaneous  thoughts  and  a  laboured  style. 
Addison  was  not  insensible  to  these  charms,  and  he  felt 
the  seductive  art  of  Cicero  when  he  said,  that  "  there  is 
as  much  difference  in  apprehending  a  thought  clothed  in 
Cicero's  language  and  that  of  a  common  author,  as  in 
seeing  an  object  by  the  light  of  a  taper,  or  by  the  light 
of  the  sun." 

'  Ma.j^xerists  in  style,  however  great  their  powei'S,  rather 
excite  the  admiration  than  the  affection  of  a  man  of  taste ; 
because  their  habitual  art  dissipates  that  illusion  of  sin- 
cerity, which  we  love  to  believe  is  the  impulse  which 
places  the  pen  in  the  hand  of  an  author.  Two  eminent 
literary  mannerists  are  Cicero  and  Johnson.  We  know 
these  great  men  considered  their  eloquence  as  a  deceptive 
art ;  of  any  subject,  it  had  been  indifferent  to  them  which 
side  to  adopt ;  and  in  reading  their  elaborate  works,  our 
ear  is  more  frequently  gratified  by  the  ambitious  magni- 
ficence of  their  diction,  than  our  heart  penetrated  by  the 
pathetic  entliusiasm  of  their  sentiments.  "Writers  who 
are  not  mannerists,  but  who  seize  the  appropriate  tone  of 
their  subject,  appear  to  feel  a  conviction  of  what  they  at- 
tempt to  persuade  their  reader.  It  is  observable,  that  it 
is  impossible  to  imitate  with  uniform  felicity  the  noble 
simplicity  of  a  pathetic  writer;  while  the  peculiarities  of 
a  mannerist  are  so  far  from  being  diificult,  that  they  are 
displayed  with  nice  exactness  by  middling  writers,  who. 


GOLDSMITH  AND  JOHNSON.  383 

although  their  own  natural  manner  had  nothing  interest- 
ing, have  attracted  notice  by  such  imitations.  We  may 
apply  to  some  monotonous  mannerists  these  verses  of 
Boileau : 

Youlez-voiis  dn  public  mcriter  les  amours  ? 

Sans  cesse  en  ecrivant  variez  vos  discours. 

On  lit  peu  ces  auteurs  nes  pour  nous  ennuier, 

Qui  toujours  sur  un  ton  semblent  psalmodier. 

"Would  you  the  public's  envied  favours  gain  ? 
Ceaseless,  in  writing,  variegate  the  strain ; 
The  heavy  author,  who  the  fancy  calms. 
Seems  in  one  tone  to  chant  his  nasal  psalms. 

Every  style  is  excellent,  if  it  be  proper ;  and  that  style 
is  most  proper  which  can  best  convey  the  intentions  of 
the  author  to  his  reader.  And,  after  all,  it  is  style  alone 
by  which  posterity  will  judge  of  a  great  work,  for  an 
author  can  have  nothing  truly  his  own  but  his  style ; 
facts,  scientific  discoveries,  and  every  kmd  of  informa- 
tion, may  be  seized  by  all,  but  an  author's  diction  can- 
not be  taken  from  him.  Hence  very  leai'ned  writers  have 
been  neglected,  while  their  learning  has  not  been  lost  to 
the  world,  by  having  been  given  by  wi'iters  with  more 
amenity.  It  is  therefore  the  duty  of  an  author  to  learn 
to  write  as  well  as  to  learn  to  think ;  and  this  art  can 
only  be  obtained  by  the  habitual  study  of  his  sensations, 
and  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  intellectual  facul- 
ties. These  are  the  true  prompters  of  those  felicitous  ex- 
pressions which  give  a  tone  congruous  to  the  subject,  and 
which  invest  our  thoughts  with  all  the  illusion,  the  beauty 
and  motion  of  lively  perception. 


GOLDSmTH  AND  JOHNSOK 

WE  should  not  censure  artists  and  wi-iters  for  their 
attachment  to  their  favourite  excellence.     Who  but  an 


384:  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

artist  can  value  the  ceaseless  inquietudes  of  arduous  ^jer 
fection  ;  can  trace  the  remote  possibilities  combined  in  a 
close  union ;  the  happy  arrangement  and  the  novel  varia- 
tion ?  He  not  only  is  aifected  by  the  performance  like 
the  man  of  taste,  but  is  influenced  by  a  peculiar  sensation ; 
for  while  he  contemplates  the  apparent  beauties,  he  traces 
in  his  own  mind  those  invisible  processes  by  which  the 
final  beauty  was  accomplished.  Hence  arises  that  species 
of  comparative  criticism  which  one  great  author  usually 
makes  of  his  own  manner  with  that  of  another  great 
writer,  and  which  so  often  causes  him  to  be  stigmatised 
with  the  most  unreasonable  vanity. 

The  character  of  Goldsmith,  so  underrated  in  his  own 
day,  exemplifies  this  principle  in  the  literary  character. 
That  pleasing  writer,  without  any  perversion  of  intellect 
or  inflation  of  vanity,  might  have  contrasted  his  powers 
with  those  of  Johnson,  and  might,  according  to  his  own 
ideas,  have  considered  himself  as  not  inferior  to  his  more 
celebrated  and  learned  rival. 

Goldsmith  might  have  preferred  the  felicity  of  his  own 
genius,  which  like  a  native  stream  flowed  from  a  natural 
source,  to  the  elaborate  powers  of  Johnson,  which  in  some 
respects  may  be  compared  to  those  artificial  waters  which 
throw  their  sparkling  currents  in  the  air,  to  fall  into  mar- 
ble basins.  He  might  have  considered  that  he  had  em- 
bellished philosopliy  with  poetical  elegance  ;  and  have 
preferred  the  paintings  of  his  descriptions,  to  the  terse 
versification  and  the  pointed  sentences  of  Johnson.  He 
might  have  been  more  pleased  with  the  faithful  represen- 
tations of  English  manners  in  his  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield," 
than  with  tlie  borrowed  grandeur  and  the  exotic  fancy 
of  tlie  Oriental  Rasselas.  He  might  have  believed,  what 
many  excellent  critics  have  believed,  that  in  this  age 
comedy  requires  more  genius  than  tragedy;  and  with  his 
audience  he  might  liavo  infinitely  more  esteemed  his  own 
original  humour,  than  Johnson's  rhetorical  declamation. 


SELF-CHARACTERS.  385 

He  might  have  thought,  that  with  inferior  literature  he 
displayed  superior  genius,  and  with  less  profundity  more 
gaiety.  He  might  have  considered  that  the  facility  and 
vivacity  of  his  pleasing  compositions  were  preferable  to 
that  art,  that  habitual  pomp,  and  that  ostentatious  elo- 
quence, which  prevail  in  the  operose  labours  of  Johnson. 
No  one  might  be  more  sensible  than  hunself,  that  he,  ac- 
cording to  the  happy  expression  of  Johnson  (when  his 
rival  was  in  his  grave),  "tetigit  et  ornavit."  Gold- 
smith, therefore,  without  any  singular  vanity,  might  have 
concluded,  from  his  own  reasonings,  that  he  was  not  an 
inferior  writer  to  Johnson  :  all  this  not  having  been  con- 
sidered, he  has  come  down  to  posterity  as  the  vainest  and 
the  most  jealous  of  writers ;  he  whose  dispositions  were 
the  most  inoffensive,  whose  benevolence  was  the  most 
extensive,  and  whose  amiableness  of  heart  has  been  con 
cealed  by  its  artlessness,  and  passed  over  in  the  sarcasms 
and  sneers  of  a  more  eloquent  rival,  and  his  submissive 
partisans. 


SELF-CHARACTERS. 

There  are  two  species  of  minor  biography  which  may 
be  discriminated ;  detailing  our  own  life  and  portraying 
our  own  character.  The  writing  our  own  life  has  been 
practised  with  various  success ;  it  is  a  delicate  operation, 
a  stroke  too  much  may  destroy  the  effect  of  the  whole. 
If  once  we  detect  an  author  deceiving  or  deceived,  it  is 
a  livid  spot  which  infects  the  entire  body.  To  publish 
one's  own  life  has  sometimes  been  a  poor  artifice  to  bring 
obscurity  into  notice;  it  is  the  ebriety  of  vanity,  and 
the  delirium  of  egotism.  When  a  great  man  leaves  some 
memorial  of  his  days,  the  grave  consecrates  the  motive. 
There  are  certain  things  which  relate  to  ourselves,  which 
DO  one  can  know  so  well;  a  great  genius  obliges  posterity 
25 


386  LITERAET  CHARACTER. 

when  he  records  them.  But  they  must  be  composed 
with  cahnness,  with  simplicity,  and  with  sincerity ;  the 
biographic  sketch  of  Hume,  written  by  himself,  is  a 
model  of  Attic  simplicity.  The  Life  of  Lord  Herbert  is 
a  biographical  curiosity.  The  Memoirs  of  Sir  William 
Jones,  of  Priestley,  and  of  Gibbon,  oiFer  us  the  daily  life 
of  the  student ;  and  those  of  Colley  Gibber  are  a  fine 
picture  of  the  self-painter.  We  have  some  other  pieces 
of  self-biography,  precious  to  the  philosopher.* 

The  other  species  of  minor  biography,  that  of  por- 
traying our  own  character,  coiild  only  have  been  invented 
by  the  most  refined  and  the  vainest  nation.  The  French 
long  cherished  this  darling  egotism ;  and  have  a  collec- 
tion of  these  self-portraits  in  two  bulky  volumes.  The 
brilliant  Flechier,  and  the  refined  St.  Evremond,  have 
framed  and  glazed  their  portraits.  Every  writer  then 
considered  his  character  as  necessary  as  his  preface. 
The  fashion  seems  to  have  passed  over  to  our  country ; 
Farquhar  has  drawn  his  character  in  a  letter  to  a  lady  ; 
and  others  of  our  writers  have  given  us  their  own  minia- 
tures. 

There  was,  as  a  book  in  my  possession  will  testify,  a 
certain  verse-maker  of  the  name  of  Gantenac,  who,  in 
1662,  published  in  the  city  of  Paris  a  volume,  containing 
Bome  thousands  of  verses,  which  were,  as  his  countrymen 
express  it,  de  sa  fa^on^  after  his  own  way.  He  fell  so 
suddenly  into  the  darkest  and  deepest  pit  of  oblivion, 
that  not  a  trace  of  his  memory  would  have  remained, 
had  he  not  condescended  to  give  ample  information  of 
every  particular  relative  to  himself.  He  has  acquainted 
us  with  his  size,  and  tells  us,  "  that  it  is  rare  to  see  a  man 
smaller  than  himself  I  have  that  in  common  with  all 
dwarfs,  that  if  my  head  only  were  seen,  I  should  be 

*  Ono  of  the  most  interesting  ia  that  of  Gifford,  appeuded  to  his 
translation  of  Juvonal ;  it  is  a  most  remarkable  record  of  the  strug- 
gles of  its  author  in  early  life,  told  with  candour  and  simplicity. — Ed. 


SELF-CHARACTERS.  387 

thought  a  large  man."  This  atom  in  creation  then  de- 
Bcribes  his  oval  and  full  face;  his  fiery  and  eloquent  eyes; 
his  vermil  lips ;  his  robust  constitution,  and  his  efferves- 
cent passions.  He  appears  to  have  been  a  most  petulant, 
honest,  and  diminutive  being. 

The  description  of  his  intellect  is  the  object  of  our  curi- 
osity. "  I  am  as  ambitious  as  any  person  can  be  ;  but  I 
would  not  sacrifice  my  honour  to  my  ambition.  I  am  so 
sensible  to  contempt,  that  I  bear  a  mortal  and  implacable 
hatred  against  those  who  contemn  me,  and  I  know  I  could 
never  reconcile  myself  with  them ;  but  I  spare  no  attentions 
for  those  I  love ;  I  would  give  them  my  fortune  and  my 
life.  I  sometimes  lie ;  but  generally  in  affairs  of  gallantry, 
where  I  voluntarily  confirm  falsehoods  by  oaths,  without 
reflection,  for  swearing  with  me  is  a  habit.  I  am  told 
that  my  mind  is  brilliant,  and  that  I  have  a  certain  man- 
ner in  turning  a  thought  which  is  quite  my  own.  I  am 
agreeable  in  conversation,  though  I  confess  I  am  often 
troublesome ;  for  I  maintain  paradoxes  to  display  my 
genius,  which  savour  too  much  of  scholastic  subterfuges. 
I  speak  too  often  and  too  long ;  and  as  I  have  some  read- 
ing, and  a  copious  memory,  I  am  fond  of  showing  what- 
ever I  know.  My  judgment  is  not  so  solid  as  my  wit  is 
lively.  I  am  often  melancholy  and  unhappy;  and  this 
sombrous  disposition  proceeds  from  my  numerous  disap- 
pointments in  Ufe.  My  verse  is  preferred  to  my  prose ; 
and  it  has  been  of  some  use  to  me  in  pleasing  the  fair 
sex  ;  poetry  is  most  adapted  to  persuade  women ;  but 
otherwise  it  has  been  of  no  service  to  me,  and  has,  I  fear, 
rendered  me  unfit  for  many  advantageous  occupations,  in 
which  I  might  have  drudged.  The  esteem  of  the  fair 
has,  however,  charmed  away  my  complaints.  This  good 
fortune  has  been  obtained  by  me,  at  the  cost  of  many 
cares,  and  an  unsubdued  patience ;  for  I  am  one  of  those 
who,  in  affairs  of  love,  will  suffer  an  entire  year,  to  taste 
the  pleasures  of  one  day." 


388  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

This  character  of  Cantenac  has  some  local  features ; 
for  an  English  poet  would  hardly  console  himself  with  so 
much  gaiety.  The  Frenchman's  attachment  to  the  ladies 
seems  to  be  equivalent  to  the  advantageous  occupations 
he  had  lost.  But  as  the  miseries  of  a  literary  man, 
without  conspicuous  talents,  are  always  the  same  at 
Paris  as  in  London,  thei-e  are  some  parts  of  this  charac- 
ter of  Cantenac  which  appear  to  describe  them  with 
truth.  Cantenac  was  a  man  of  honour ;  as  warm  in  his 
resentment  as  his  gratitude ;  but  deluded  by  literary 
vanity,  he  became  a  writer  in  prose  and  verse,  and  while 
he  saw  the  prospects  of  life  closing  on  him,  probably 
considered  that  the  age  was  unjust.  A  melancholy  ex- 
ample for  certain  volatile  and  fervent  spirits,  who,  by 
becoming  authors,  either  submit  their  felicity  to  the  ca- 
prices of  others,  or  annihilate  the  obscure  comforts  of 
life,  and,  like  him,  having  "  been  told  that  their  mind  is 
brilliant,  and  that  they  have  a  certain  manner  in  turning 
a  thought,"  become  writers,  and  complain  that  they  are 
"  often  melancholy,  owing  to  their  numerous  disappoint- 
ments." Happy,  however,  if  the  obscure,  yet  too  sen- 
sible writer,  can  suffer  an  entire  year,  for  the  enjoyment 
of  a  single  day !  But  for  this,  a  man  must  have  been 
born  in  France. 


ON    READING. 

Writing  is  justly  denominated  an  art ;  I  think  that 
reading  claims  the  same  distinction.  To  adorn  ideas 
with  elegance  is  an  act  of  the  mind  superior  to  that  of 
receiving  them ;  but  to  receive  them  with  a  happy  dis- 
crimination is  the  effect  of  a  practised  taste. 

Yet  it  will  be  found  that  taste  alone  is  not  sufficient  to 
obtain  the  proper  end  of  reading.  Two  persons  of  equal 
taste  rise  from  the  perusal  of  the  same  book  with  very 


ON  READING.  389 

different  notions :  the  one  will  have  the  ideas  of  the 
author  at  command,  and  find  a  new  train  of  sentiment 
awakened ;  while  the  other  quits  his  author  in  a  pleasing 
distraction,  but  of  the  pleasures  of  reading  nothing  re- 
mains but  tumultuous  sensations. 

To  account  for  these  different  effects,  we  must  have  re- 
course to  a  logical  distinction,  which  appears  to  reveal  one 
of  the  great  mysteries  in  the  art  of  reading.  Logicians 
distinguish  between  pei-ceptions  and  ideas.  Perception 
IS  that  faculty  of  the  mind  which  notices  the  simple  im- 
pression of  objects :  but  when  these  objects  exist  in  the 
mind,  and  are  there  treasured  and  arranged  as  materials 
for  reflection,  then  they  are  called  ideas.  A  perception  is 
like  a  transient  sunbeam,  which  just  shows  the  object, 
but  leaves  neither  light  nor  warmth ;  while  an  idea  is 
like  the  fervid  beam  of  noon,  which  throws  a  settled  and 
powerful  light. 

Many  ingenious  readers  complain  that  their  memory 
is  defective,  and  their  studies  unfruitful.  This  defect 
arises  from  their  indulging  the  facile  pleasures  of  percep- 
tions, in  preference  to  the  laborious  habit  of  forming 
them  into  ideas.  Perceptions  require  only  the  sensibility 
of  taste,  and  their  pleasures  are  continuous,  easy,  and 
exquisite.  Ideas  are  an  art  of  combination,  and  an  ex- 
ertion of  the  reasoning  powers.  Ideas  are  therefore 
labours ;  and  for  those  who  will  not  labour,  it  is  unjust 
to  complain,  if  they  come  from  the  harvest  with  scarcely 
a  sheaf  in  their  hands. 

There  are  secrets  in  the  art  of  reading  which  tend  to 
facilitate  its  purposes,  by  assisting  the  memory,  and  aug- 
menting intellectual  opulence.  Some  our  own  ingenuity 
must  form,  and  perhaps  every  student  has  peculiar  habits 
of  study,  as,  in  short-hand,  almost  every  writer  has  a 
system  of  his  own. 

It  is  an  observation  of  the  elder  Pliny  (who,  having 
been    a    voluminous    compiler,    must  have    had   great 


390  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

experience  iu  the  art  of  reading),  that  there  was  no  book 
80  bad  but  which  contained  something  good.  To  read 
every  book  would,  however,  be  fatal  to  the  interest  of 
most  readers ;  but  it  is  not  always  necessary,  in  the 
pursuits  of  learning,  to  read  every  book  entire.  Of 
many  books  it  is  sufficient  to  seize  the  plan,  and  to 
examine  some  of  their  portions.  Of  the  little  supple- 
ment at  the  close  of  a  volume,  few  readers  conceive  the 
utility ;  but  some  of  the  most  eminent  writers  in  Europe 
have  been  great  adepts  in  the  art  of  index  reading,  I, 
for  my  part,  venerate  the  inventor  of  indexes;  and  I 
know  not  to  whom  to  yield  the  preference,  either  to 
Hippocrates,  who  was  the  first  great  anatomiser  of  the 
human  body,  or  to  that  unknown  labourer  in  literature, 
who  first  laid  open  the  nerves  and  arteries  of  a  book. 
Watts  advises  the  perusal  of  the  prefaces  and  the  index 
of  a  book,  as  they  both  give  light  on  its  contents. 

The  ravenous  appetite  of  Johnson  for  reading  is 
expressed  in  a  strong  metaphor  by  Mrs.  Knowles,  who 
said,  "  he  knows  how  to  read  better  than  any  one ;  he 
gets  at  the  substance  of  a  book  directly :  he  tears  out  the 
heart  of  it."  Gibbon  has  a  new  idea  in  the  "  Art  of 
Reading ;"  he  says  "  we  ought  not  to  attend  to  the  order 
of  our  books  so  much  as  of  our  thoughts.  The  perusal 
of  a  particular  work  gives  birth  perhaps  to  ideas  uncon- 
nected with  the  subject  it  treats ;  I  pursue  these  ideas, 
and  quit  my  proposed  plan  of  reading."  Thus  in  the 
midst  of  Homer  he  I'ead  Longinus  ;  a  chapter  of  Longinus 
led  to  an  epistle  of  Pliny;  and  having  finished  Longinus, 
he  followed  the  train  of  his  ideas  of  the  sublime  and 
beautiful  in  the  "Enquiry"  of  ]>urke,  and  concluded  by 
comparing  the  ancient  with  tlie  modern  Longinus. 

There  are  some  mechanical  aids  in  reading  wliich  may 
prove  of  great  utility,  and  form  a  kind  of  rejuvenescence 
of  our  early  studies.  Montaigne  placed  at  the  end  of  a 
book  which  he  intended  not  to  reperuse,  the  time  he  had 


ON  READING.  391 

read  it,  with  a  concise  decision  on  its  merits;  "that," 
Bays  he,  "  it  may  thus  represent  to  me  the  air  and 
general  idea  I  had  conceived  of  the  author,  in  reading 
the  work,"  "We  have  several  of  these  annotations.  Of 
Young  the  poet  it  is  noticed,  that  whenever  he  came  to  a 
striking  passage  he  folded  the  leaf;  and  that  at  his 
death,  books  have  been  found  in  his  library  which  had  long 
resisted  the  power  of  closing :  a  mode  more  easy  than  use- 
ful ;  for  after  a  length  of  time  they  must  be  again  read  to 
know  why  they  were  folded.  This  difficulty  is  obviated  by 
those  who  note  in  a  blank  leaf  the  pages  to  be  referred  to, 
with  a  word  of  criticism.  Nor  let  us  consider  these  mi- 
nute directions  as  unworthy  the  most  enlarged  minds  :  by 
these  petty  exertions,  at  the  most  distant  periods,  may 
learning  obtain  its  authorities,  and  fancy  combine  its  ideas. 
Seneca,  in  sending  some  volumes  to  his  friend  Lucil- 
ius,  accompanies  them  with  notes  of  particular  passages, 
"  that,"  he  observes,  "  you  who  only  aim  at  the  useful 
may  be  spared  the  trouble  of  examinmg  them  entire."  I 
have  seen  books  noted  by  Yoltaire  with  a  word  of 
censure  or  approbation  on  the  page  itself,  which  was  his 
usual  practice  ;  and  these  volumes  are  precious  to  every 
man  of  taste.  Forraey  complained  that  the  books  he  lent 
Voltaire  were  returned  always  disfigured  by  his  remarks ; 
but  he  was  a  writer  of  the  old  school.* 

A  professional  student  should  divide  his  readings  into 
a  uniform  reading  which  is  useful,  and  into  a  diversified 
reading  which  is  pleasant.  Guy  Patin,  an  eminent 
physician  and  man  of  letters,  had  a  just  notion  of  this 
maimer.  lie  says,  "  I  daily  read  Hippocrates,  Galen, 
Fernel,  and  other  illustrious  masters  of  my  profession ; 
this  I  call  my  profitable  readings.  I  frequently  read 
Ovid,  Juvenal,  Horace,  Seneca,  Tacitus,  and  others,  and 

*  The  account  of  Oldys  and  his  manuscripts,  in  the  third  volume  of 
the  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  will  furnish  abundant  proof  of  the 
value  of  such  disfigurations  when  the  work  of  certain  hands. — Ed. 


392  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

these  are  my  recreations."  We  must  observe  these 
distinctions  ;  for  it  fi-equently  happens  that  a  lawyer  or  a 
pliysician,  with  great  industry  and  love  of  study,  by 
giving  too  much  into  his  diversified  readings,  may 
utterly  neglect  what  should  be  his  uniform  studies. 

A  reader  is  too  often  a  prisoner  attached  to  the  trium- 
phal car  of  an  author  of  great  celebrity ;  and  when  he 
ventures  not  to  judge  for  himself,  conceives,  while  he  is 
reading  the  indifferent  works  of  great  authors,  that  the 
languor  which  he  experiences  arises  from  his  own 
defective  taste.  But  the  best  writers,  when  they  are 
voluminous,  have  a  great  deal  of  mediocrity. 

On  the  other  side,  readers  must  not  imagine  that  all 
the  pleasures  of  composition  depend  on  the  author,  for 
there  is  something  which  a  reader  himself  must  bring  to 
the  book  that  the  book  may  please.  There  is  a  literary 
appetite,  which  the  author  can  no  more  impart  than  the 
most  skilful  cook  can  give  an  appetency  to  the  guests. 
When  Cardinal  Richelieu  said  to  Godeau,  that  he  did  not 
understand  his  verses,  the  honest  poet  replied  that  it  was 
not  his  fault.  Tlie  temporary  tone  of  the  mind  may  be 
unfavourable  to  taste  a  work  properly,  and  we  have  had 
many  erroneous  criticisms  from  great  men,  which  may 
often  be  attributed  to  this  circomstance.  The  mind 
communicates  its  infirm  dispositions  to  the  book,  and  an 
author  has  not  only  his  own  defects  to  account  for,  but 
also  those  of  his  reader.  There  is  something  in  compo- 
sition like  the  game  of  shuttlecock,  where  if  the  reader 
do  not  quickly  rebound  the  feathered  cock  to  the  author 
the  game  is  destroyed,  and  the  whole  spirit  of  the  work 
falls  extinct. 

A  frequent  impediment  in  reading  is  a  disinclination 
in  the  mind  to  settle  on  the  subject ;  agitated  by 
incongruous  and  dissimilar  ideas,  it  is  with  pain  that  we 
admit  those  of  the  author.  But  on  applying  ourselves 
with  a  gentle  violence  to  the  perusal  of  an  interesting 


ON  READING.  393 

work,  the  mind  soon  assimilates  to  the  subject;  the 
ancient  rabbins  advised  their  young  students  to  apply 
themselves  to  their  readings,  whether  they  felt  an 
inclination  or  not,  because,  as  they  proceeded,  they 
would  find  their  disposition  restored  and  their  curiosity 
awakened. 

Readers  may  be  classed  into  an  infinite  number  of  divi- 
sions; but  an  author  is  a  solitary  being,  who,  for  the 
same  reason  he  pleases  one,  must  consequently  displease 
another.  To  have  too  exalted  a  genius  is  more  prejudi- 
cial to  his  celebrity  than  to  have  a  moderate  one ;  for  we 
shall  find  that  the  most  popular  works  are  not  the  most 
profound,  but  such  as  instruct  those  who  require  instruc- 
tion, and  charm  those  who  are  not  too  learned  to  taste 
their  novelty.  Lucilius,  the  satirist,  said,  that  he  did  not 
write  for  Persius,  for  Scipio,  and  for  Rutilius,  persons 
eminent  for  their  science,  but  for  the  Tarentines,  the 
Consentines,  and  the  Sicilians,  Montaigne  has  com- 
plained that  he  found  his  readers  too  learned,  or  too 
ignorant,  and  that  he  could  only  please  a  middle  class, 
who  have  just  learning  enough  to  comprehend  him.  Con- 
greve  says,  "there  is  in  true  beauty  something  which 
vulgar  souls  cannot  admire."  Balzac  complains  bitterly 
of  readers, — "A  period,"  he  cries,  "shall  have  cost  us 
the  labour  of  a  day;  we  shall  have  distilled  into  an 
essay  the  essence  of  our  mind ;  it  may  be  a  finished  piece 
of  art ;  and  they  think  they  are  indulgent  when  they 
pronounce  it  to  contain  some  pretty  things,  and  that  the 
style  is  not  bad  !"  There  is  something  in  exquisite  com- 
position which  ordinary  readers  can  never  understand. 

Authors  are  vain,  but  readers  are  capricious.  Some 
will  only  read  old  books,  as  if  there  were  no  valuable 
truths  to  be  discovered  in  modern  publications;  while 
others  will  only  read  new  books,  as  if  some  valuable 
truths  are  not  among  the  old.  Some  mil  not  read  a 
book,  because  they  are  acquainted  with  the  author ;  by 


394  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

which  the  reader  may  be  more  injured  than  the  author : 
others  not  only  read  the  book,  but  would  also  read  the 
oaan ;  by  which  the  most  ingenious  author  may  be  injured 
by  the  most  impertinent  reader. 


ON   HABITUATING  OURSELVES  TO  AN   INDI- 
VIDUAL PURSUIT. 

Two  things  in  human  life  are  at  continual  variance, 
and  without  escaping  from  the  one  we  must  be  separated 
from  the  other  ;  and  these  ai'e  ennui  and  pleasure.  Ennui 
IS  an  afflicting  sensation,  if  we  may  thus  express  it,  from 
a  want  of  sensation ;  and  pleasure  is  greater  pleasure 
according  to  the  quantity  of  sensation.  That  sensation 
IS  received  in  proportion  to  the  capacity  of  our  organs  ; 
and  that  practice,  or,  as  it  has  been  sometimes  called, 
"  educated  feeling,"  enlarges  this  capacity,  is  evident  in 
such  familiar  instances  as  those  of  the  blind,  who  have  a 
liner  tact,  and  the  jeweller,  who  has  a  finer  sight,  than 
other  men  who  are  not  so  deeply  interested  in  refining 
their  vision  and  their  touch.  Intense  attention  is,  there- 
fore, a  certain  means  of  deriving  more  numerous  pleasures 
from  its  object. 

Hence  it  is  that  the  poet,  long  employed  on  a  poem, 
has  received  a  quantity  of  pleasure  which  no  reader  can 
ever  feel.  In  the  progress  of  any  particular  pursuit, 
there  are  a  hundred  fugitive  sensations  which  are  too 
intellectual  to  be  embodied  into  language.  Every  artist 
knows  that  between  the  thought  that  first  gave  rise  to 
his  design,  and  each  one  whicli  appears  in  it,  there  are 
innumerable  intermediate  evanescences  of  sensation  which 
no  man  felt  but  himself.  These  pleasui'cs  are  in  number 
according  to  the  intenseness  of  his  faculties  and  the 
quantity  of  his  labour. 

It  is  so  in  any  particular  pursuit,  from  the  manufactur- 


HABITUATING  OURSELVES,  ETC.  395 

ing  of  pins  to  the  construction  of  philosophical  systems. 
Every  individual  can  exert  that  quantity  of  mind  neces- 
sary to  his  wants  and  adapted  to  his  situation;  the 
quality  of  pleasure  is  nothing  in  the  present  question : 
for  I  think  that  we  are  mistaken  concerning  the  grada- 
tions of  human  ffelicity.  It  does  at  first  appeal*,  that  an 
astronomer  rapt  in  abstraction,  while  he  gazes  on  a  star, 
must  feel  a  more  exquisite  delight  than  a  farmer  who  ia 
conducting  his  team ;  or  a  poet  experience  a  higher  grati- 
fication in  modulating  verses  than  a  trader  in  arranging 
sums.  But  the  happiness  of  the  ploughman  and  the 
trader  may  be  as  satisfactory  as  that  of  the  astronomer 
and  the  poet.  Our  mind  can  only  be  conversant  AA-ith 
those  sensations  which  surround  us,  and  possessing  the 
skill  of  managing  them,  we  can  form  an  artificial  felicity ; 
it  is  certain  that  what  the  soul  does  not  feel,  no  more 
affects  it  than  what  the  eye  does  not  see.  It  is  thus  that 
the  trader,  habituated  to  humble  pursuits,  can  never  be 
unhappy  because  he  is  not  the  general  of  an  army  ;  for 
this  idea  of  felicity  he  has  never  received.  The  philoso- 
pher who  gives  his  entire  years  to  the  elevated  pursuits 
of  mind,  is  never  unhappy  because  he  is  not  in  posses- 
sion of  an  Indian  opiflencc,  for  the  idea  of  accumulating 
this  exotic  splendour  has  never  entered  the  range  of  his 
combinations.  Nature,  an  impartial  mother,  renders 
felicity  as  perfect  in  the  school-boy  who  scourges  his  top, 
as  in  the  astronomer  who  regulates  his  star.  The  thing 
contained  can  only  be  equal  to  the  container ;  a  full  glass 
is  as  full  as  a  full  bottle ;  and  a  human  soul  may  be  as 
much  satisfied  in  the  lowest  of  human  beings  as  in  the 
highest. 

In  the  progress  of  an  individual  pursuit,  what  philoso- 
phers call  the  associating  or  suggesting  idea  is  ever 
busied,  and  in  its  beautiful  effects  genius  is  most  deeply 
concerned ;  for  besides  those  trains  of  thought  the  great 
artist  falls  into  during  his  actual  composition,  a  distinct 


396  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

habit  accompanies  real  genius  through  life  in  the  activity 
of  his  associating  idea,  when  not  at  his  work ;  it  is  at  all 
times  pressing  and  conducting  his  spontaneous  thoughts, 
and  every  object  which  suggests  them,  however  ap- 
parently trivial  or  unconnected  towards  itself,  making 
what  it  wills  its  own,  while  instinctively  it  seems  in- 
attentive to  whatever  has  no  tendency  to  its  own  pur- 
poses. 

Many  peculiar  advantages  attend  the  cultivation  of 
one  master  passion  or  occupation.  In  superior  minds  it 
is  a  sovereign  that  exiles  others,  and  in  inferior  minds 
it  enfeebles  pernicious  propensities.  It  may  render  us 
useful  to  our  fellow-citizens,  and  it  imparts  the  most  pei> 
feet  independence  to  ourselves.  It  is  observed  by  a  great 
mathematician,  that  a  geometrician  would  not  be  unhappy 
in  a  desert. 

This  unity  of  design,  with  a  centripetal  force,  draws 
all  the  rays  of  our  existence ;  and  often,  when  accident 
has  turned  the  mind  firmly  to  one  object,  it  has  been 
discovered  that  its  occupation  is  another  name  for  hap- 
piness ;  for  it  is  a  mean  of  escaping  from  incongruous 
sensations.  It  secures  us  from  the  dark  vacuity  of  soul, 
as  well  as  from  the  whirlwind  of  ideas ;  reason  itself  is  a 
passion,  but  a  passion  full  of  serenity. 

It  is,  however,  observable  of  those  who  have  devoted 
themselves  to  an  individual  object,  that  its  importance  is 
incredibly  enlarged  to  their  sensations.  Intense  atten- 
tion magnifies  like  a  microscope;  but  it  is  possible  to 
apologise  for  their  apparent  extravagance  from  the  con- 
sideration, that  they  really  observe  combinations  not 
perceived  by  others  of  inferior  application.  That  this 
passion  has  been  carried  to  a  curious  violence  of  aifec- 
tion,  literary  history  affords  numerous  instances.  In 
reading  Dr.  Barney's  "  Musical  Travels,"  it  would  seem 
that  music  was  the  prime  object  of  luunan  life ;  Richard- 
son, the  painter,  in  his  treatise  on  his  beloved  art,  closes 


ON  NOVELTY  IN  LITERATURE.  397 

all  by  affirming,  that,  "  Raphael  is  not  only  equal^  but 
superior  to  a  Virgil^  or  a  Liviy^  or  a  Thucydides^  or  a 
Homer  r''  and  that  painting  can  reform  our  manners, 
increase  our  opulence,  honour,  and  power.  Denina,  in 
his  "  Revolutions  of  Literature,"  tells  us  that  to  excel  in 
historical  composition  requires  more  ability  than  is  exer- 
cised by  the  excelling  masters  of  any  other  art ;  because 
it  requires  not  only  the  same  erudition,  genius,  imagina- 
tion, and  taste,  necessary  for  a  poet,  a  painter,  or  a  phi- 
losopher, but  the  historian  must  also  have  some  peculiar 
qualifications;  this  served  as  a  prelude  to  his  own  his- 
tory,* Helvetius,  an  enthusiast  in  the  fine  arts  and  polite 
literature,  has  composed  a  poem  on  Happiness ;  and 
imagines  that  it  consists  in  an  exclusive  love  of  the 
cultivation  of  letters  and  the  arts.  All  this  shows  that 
the  more  intensely  we  attach  ourselves  to  an  individual 
object,  the  more  numerous  and  the  more  perfect  are  our 
sensations;  if  we  yield  to  the  distracting  variety  of 
opposite  pursuits  with  an  equal  passion,  our  soul  is  placed 
amid  a  continual  shock  of  ideas,  and  happiness  is  lost  by 
mistakes. 


ON  NOVELTY  IN  LITERATURE. 

"  All  is  said,"  exclaims  the  lively  La  Bruyere  ;  but  at 
the  same  moment,  by  his  own  admirable  Reflections, 
confutes  the  dreary  system  he  would  establish.  An 
opinion  of  the  exhausted  state  of  literature  has  been  a 
popular  prejudice  of  remote  existence  ;  and  an  unhappy 
idea  of  a  wise  ancient,  who,  even  in  his  day,  lamented 

*  One  of  the  most  amusing  modem  instances  occurs  in  the  Preface 
to  the  late  Peter  Buchan's  annotated  edition  of  "  Ancient  Ballads  and 
Songs  of  the  North  of  Scotland"  (2  vols.  8vo,  Edin.  1828),  in  which 
he  declares — "  No  one  has  yet  conceived,  nor  has  it  entered  the  mind 
of  man,  what  patience,  perseverance,  and  general  knowledge  are  necea- 
sary  for  an  editor  of  a  Collection  of  Ancient  BaUads." — Ed. 


398  LITERARY  CRA-RACTER. 

that  "  of  books  there  is  no  end,"  has  been  transcribed  in 
many  books.  He  who  has  critically  examined  any  branch 
of  literature,  has  discovered  how  little  of  original  inven- 
tion is  to  be  found  even  in  the  most  excellent  works.  To 
add  a  little  to  his  predecessors  satisfies  the  ambition  of 
the  first  geniuses.  The  popular  notion  of  literary  nov- 
elty is  an  idea  more  fanciful  than  exact.  IMany  are  yet 
to  learn  that  our  admired  originals  are  not  such  as  they 
mistake  them  to  be  ;  that  the  plans  of  the  most  original 
performances  have  been  borrowed  ;  and  that  the  thoughts 
of  the  most  admired  compositions  are  not  wonderful  dis- 
coveries, but  only  truths,  which  the  ingenuity  of  the 
author,  by  arranging  the  intermediate  and  accessary 
ideas,  has  unfolded  from  that  confused  sentiment,  which 
those  experience  who  are  not  accustomed  to  think  with 
depth,  or  to  discriminate  with  accuracy.  This  Novelty 
in  Literature  is,  as  Pope  defines  it, 

What  oft  waa  thought,  but  ne'er  so  well  express'd. 

Novelty,  in  its  rigid  acceptation,  will  not  be  found  in  any 
judicious  production. 

Yoltaire  looked  on  everything  as  imitation.  He  ob- 
serves that  the  most  original  writers  borrowed  one  from 
another,  and  says  that  the  instruction  we  gather  from 
books  is  like  fire — we  fetch  it  from  our  neighbours,  kindle 
it  at  home,  and  communicate*  it  to  others,  till  it  becomes 
the  property  of  all.  He  traces  some  of  the  finest  com- 
positions to  the  fountain-head ;  and  the  reader  smiles 
when  he  perceives  that  they  have  travelled  in  regular 
succession  through  China,  India,  Arabia,  and  Greece,  to 
France  and  to  England. 

To  the  obscurity  of  time  are  the  ancients  indebted 
for  that  originality  in  which  they  are  imagined  to  excel, 
but  we  knoAV  how  frequently  they  accuse  each  other ;  and 
to  have  borrowed  copiously  from  preceding  writers  was 
not  considered  criminal  by  such  illustrious  authors  as 


ON   NOVELTY   IN   LITERATURE  399 

Plato  and  Cicero.  The  JEneid  of  Virgil  displays  little 
invention  in  the  incidents,  for  it  nnites  the  plan  of  the 
Uiad  and  the  Odyssey. 

Our  own  early  Avriters  have  not  more  originality  than 
modern  genius  may  aspire  to  reach.  To  imitate  and  to 
rival  the  Italians  and  the  French  formed  their  devotion. 
Chaucer,  Gower,  and  Gawin  Douglas,  were  all  spirited 
imitators,  and  frequently  only  masterly  translators. 
Spenser,  the  father  of  so  many  poets,  is  himself  the  child 
of  the  Ausonian  Muse.  Milton  is  incessantly  borrowing 
from  the  poetry  of  his  day.  In  the  beautiful  Masque  of 
Comus  he  preserved  all  the  circumstances  of  the  work  he 
imitated.  Tasso  opened  for  him  the  Tartarean  Gulf;  the 
sublime  description  of  the  bridge  may  be  found  in  Sadi, 
who  borrowed  it  from  the  Turkish  theology ;  the  para- 
dise of  fools  is  a  wild  flower,  transplanted  from  the  wil- 
derness of  Ariosto.  The  rich  poetry  of  Gray  is  a  won- 
derful tissue,  woven  on  the  frames,  and  composed  with 
the  gold  threads,  of  others.  To  Cervantes  we  owe  But- 
ler ;  and  the  united  abilities  of  three  great  wits,  in  their 
Martinus  Scrihlerus,  could  find  no  other  mode  of  con- 
veying their  powers  but  by  imitating  at  once  Don 
Quixote  and  Monsieur  Oufle.  Pope,  like  Boileau,  had  all 
the  ancients  and  moderns  in  his  pay ;  the  contributions 
he  levied  were  not  the  pillages  of  a  bandit,  but  the  taxes 
of  a  monarch.  Swift  is  much  indebted  for  the  plans  of 
his  two  very  original  performances  :  he  owes  the  "  Trav- 
els of  Gulliver  "  to  the  "  Voyages  of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac 
to  the  Sun  and  Moon  ;"  a  writer,  who,  without  the  acute- 
ness  of  Swift,  has  wilder  flashes  of  fancy  ;  Joseph  War- 
ton  has  observed  many  of  Swift's  strokes  in  Bishop 
Godwin's  "  Man  in  the  Moon,"  who,  in  his  turn,  must  have 
borrowed  his  work  from  Cyrano.  "  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  " 
is  an  imitation  of  such  various  originals,  that  they  are  too 
numerous  here  to  mention,  Wotton  observed,  justly, 
that  in  many  places  the  author's  wit  is  not  his  own. 


400  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

Dr.  Ferriar's  "  Essay  on  the  Imitations  of  Sterne"  might 
be  considerably  augmented.  Such  are  the  writers,  how- 
ever, who  imitate,  but  remain  inimitable  ! 

Montaigne,  with  honest  naivete,  compares  his  writings 
to  a  thread  that  binds  the  flowers  of  others  ;  and  that,  by 
incessantly  pouring  the  waters  of  a  few  good  old  authors 
into  his  sieve,  some  drops  fall  upon  his  paper.  The  good 
old  man  elsewhere  acquaints  us  with  a  certain  stratagem 
of  his  own  invention,  consisting  of  his  inserting  whole 
sentences  from  the  ancients,  without  acknowledgment, 
that  the  critics  might  blunder,  by  giving  nazardes  to 
Seneca  and  Plutarch,  while  they  imagined  they  tweaked 
his  nose.  Petrarch,  who  is  not  the  inventor  of  that  ten- 
der poetry  of  which  he  is  the  model,  and  Boccaccio,  called 
the  father  of  Italian  novelists,  have  alike  profited  by  a 
studious  perusal  of  writers,  who  are  now  only  read  by 
those  who  have  more  curiosity  than  taste.  Boiardo  has 
imitated  Pulci,  and  Ariosto,  Boiardo.  The  madness  of 
Orlando  Furioso,  though  it  wears,  by  its  extravagance,  a 
very  original  air,  is  only  imitated  from  Sir  Launcelot  in 
the  old  romance  of  "  Morte  Arthur,"  with  which,  Warton 
observes,  it  agrees  in  every  leading  circumstance ;  and 
what  is  the  Cardenio  of  Cervantes  but  the  Orlando  of 
Ariosto  ?  Tasso  has  imitated  the  Hiad,  and  enriched  his 
poem  with  episodes  from  the  .^^Jneid.  It  is  cui-ious  to 
observe  that  even  Dante,  wild  and  original  as  he  appears, 
when  he  meets  Virgil  in  the  Inferno,  warmly  expresses 
his  gratitude  for  the  many  fine  passages  for  which  he  was 
indebted  to  his  works,  and  on  which  he  says  he  had  "  long 
meditated."  Moliere  and  La  Fontaine  are  considered  to 
possess  as  much  originality  as  any  of  the  French  writers ; 
yet  the  learned  Menage  calls  Moliere  "  un  grand  et  habile 
picorcur ;"  and  Boileau  tells  us  that  La  Fontaine  bor- 
rowed his  style  and  matter  from  Marot  and  Rabelais,  and 
took  his  subjects  from  Boccaccio,  Poggius,  and  Ariosto. 
Nor  was  the  eccentric  Rabelais  the  inventor  of  most  of 


VERS   DE   SOCIETB.  401 

his  burlesque  narratives  ;  and  he  is  a  very  close  imitator 
of  Folengo,  the  inventor  of  the  macaronic  poetry,  and 
not  a  little  indebted  to  the  old  Facezie  of  the  Italians. 
Indeed  Marot,  Villon,  as  well  as  those  we  have  noticed, 
profited  by  the  authors  anterior  to  the  age  of  Francis  I. 
La  Bruyere  incorporates  whole  passages  of  Publius  Syrus 
in  his  work,  as  the  translator  of  the  latter  abundantly 
shows.  To  the  "  Turkish  Spy"  was  Montesquieu  be- 
holden for  his  "  Persian  Letters,"  and  a  numerous  crowd 
are  indebted  to  Montesquieu.  Corneille  made  a  liberal 
use  of  Spanish  literature  ;  and  the  pure  waters  of  Racine 
flowed  from  the  fountains  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides. 

This  vein  of  imitation  runs  through  the  productions  of 
our  greatest  authors.  Vigneul  de  Marville  compares 
some  of  the  first  writers  to  bankers  who  are  rich  with 
the  assembled  fortunes  of  individuals,  and  would  be  often 
ruined  were  they  too  hardly  drawn  on. 


VERS  DE  SOCLfiT:^. 

PLTirr,  in  an  epistle  to  Tuscus,  advises  him  to  intermix 
among  his  severer  studies  the  softening  charms  of  poetry; 
and  notices  a  species  of  poetical  composition  which  merits 
critical  animadversion.  I  shall  quote  Pliny  in  the  lan- 
guage of  his  elegant  translator.  He  says,  "  These  pieces 
commonly  go  under  the  title  of  poetical  amusements  ; 
but  these  amusements  have  sometimes  gained  as  much 
reputation  to  their  authors  as  works  of  a  more  serious 
nature.  It  is  surprising  how  much  the  mind  is  enter- 
tained and  enlivened  by  these  little  poetical  compositions, 
as  they  turn  upon  subjects  of  gallantry,  satire,  tender- 
ness, politeness,  and  everything,  in  short,  that  concerns 
life,  and  the  affairs  of  the  world." 

This  species  of  poetry  has  been  carried  to  its  utmost 


402  ,  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

perfection  by  the  French.  It  has  been  discriminated  by 
them,  from  the  mass  of  poetry,  under  the  apt  title  of 
"  Poesies  leg^res^''  and  sometimes  it  has  been  significantly 
called  "  Yers  de  SocietV  The  French  writers  have 
formed  a  body  of  this  fugitive  poetry  which  no  European 
nation  can  rival ;  and  to  which  both  the  language  and 
genius  appear  to  be  greatly  favourable. 

The  "  Poesies  leglres^''  are  not  merely  compositions  of  a 
light  and  gay  turn,  but  are  equally  employed  as  a  vehicle 
for  tender  and  pathetic  sentiment.  They  are  never  long, 
for  they  are  consecrated  to  the  amusement  of  society. 
The  author  appears  to  have  composed  them  for  his  pleas- 
ure, not  for  his  glory  ;  and  he  charms  his  readers,  because 
he  seems  careless  of  their  approbation. 

Every  delicacy  of  sentiment  must  find  its  delicacy  of 
expression,  and  every  tenderness  of  thought  must  be 
softened  by  the  tenderest  tones.  Nothing  trite  or  trivial 
must  enfeeble  and  chill  the  imagination  ;  nor  must  the 
ear  be  denied  its  gratification  by  a  rough  or  careless 
verse.  In  these  works  nothing  is  pardoned ;  a  word 
may  disturb,  a  line  may  destroy  the  charm. 

The  passions  of  the  poet  may  form  the  subjects  of  his 
verse.  It  is  in  these  writings  he  delineates  himself;  he 
reflects  his  tastes,  his  desires,  his  humours,  his  amours, 
and  even  his  defects.  In  other  poems  the  poet  disappears 
under  the  feigned  character  he  assumes  ;  here  alone  he 
speaks,  here  he  acts.  He  makes  a  confidant  of  the  reader, 
interests  him  in  his  hopes  and  his  sorrows  ;  we  admire 
the  poet,  and  conclude  with  esteeming  the  man.  The 
poem  is  the  complaint  of  a  lover,  or  a  compliment  to  a 
patron,  a  vow  of  friendship,  or  a  hymn  of  gratitude. 

These  poems  have  often,  with  great  success,  displayed 
pictures  of  manners ;  for  here  the  poet  colours  the  ob- 
jects with  all  the  hues  of  social  life.  Reflection  must 
not  be  amplified,  iox  these  are  pieces  devoted  to  the 
fancy ;   a  scene  may  be  painted  throughout  the  poem  ;   a 


VERS  DE  SOCIETE.  4,03 

BeLtiment  must  be  conveyed  in  a  verse.  In  the  "  Grongar 
Hill "  of  Dyer  we  discover  some  strokes  which  may  serve 
to  exemplify  this  criticism.  The  poet,  contemplating  the 
distant  landscape,  observes — 

A  step  methinks  may  pass  the  stream, 
So  little  distant  dangers  seem  ; 
So  we  mistake  the  future's  face, 
Eyed  through  Hope's  deluding  glass. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that,  because  these  poems  are 
concise,  they  are  of  easy  production;  a  poet's  genius 
may  not  be  diminutive  because  his  pieces  are  so ;  nor 
must  we  call  them,  as  a  fine  sonnet  has  been  called,  a  diffi- 
cult trifle.  A  circle  may  be  very  small,  yet  it  may  be  as 
mathematically  beautiful  and  perfect  as  a  larger  one. 
To  such  compositions  we  may  apply  the  observation  of 
an  ancient  critic,  that  though  a  little  thing  gives  perfec- 
tion, yet  perfection  is  not  a  little  thing. 

The  poet  must  be  alike  polished  by  an  intercourse 
with  the  world  as  with  the  studies  of  taste;  one  to 
whom  labour  is  negligence,  refinement  a  science,  and  art 
a  nature. 

Genius  will  not  always  be  sufficient  to  impart  that 
grace  of  amenity.  Many  of  the  French  nobility,  who 
cultivated  poetry,  have  therefore  oftener  excelled  in 
these  poetical  amusements  than  more  professed  poets. 
France  once  delighted  in  the  amiable  and  ennobled 
names  of  Nivernois,  Boufflers,  and  St.  Aignan  ;  they  have 
not  been  considered  as  unworthy  rivals  of  Chaulieu  and 
Bernard,  of  Voltaire  and  Gresset. 

All  the  minor  odes  of  Horace,  and  the  entire  Anac- 
reon,  are  compositions  of  tliis  kind ;  effusions  of  the 
heart,  and  pictures  of  the  imagination,  which  were  pro- 
duced in  the  convivial,  the  amatory,  and  the  pensive 
hour.  Our  nation  has  not  always  been  successful  in 
these  performances ;  they  have  not  been  kindred  to  its 
genius.     With  Charles   II.   something   of  a  gayer   and 


404  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

more  aiiy  taste  was  communicated  to  our  poetry,  but  it 
was  desultory  and  incorrect.  Waller,  both  by  his  habits 
and  his  genius,  was  well  adapted  to  excel  in  this  lighter 
poetry  ;  and  he  has  often  attained  the  perfection  which 
the  state  of  the  language  then  permitted.  Prior  has  a 
variety  of  sallies;  but  his  humour  is  sometimes  gross, 
and  his  versification  is  sometimes  embarrassed.  He  knew 
the  value  of  these  chai-ming  pieces,  and  he  had  drunk  of 
this  Bm-gundy  in  the  vineyard  itself.  He  has  some  trans- 
lations, and  some  plagiarisms ;  but  some  of  his  verses  to 
Chloe  are  eminently  airy  and  pleasing.  A  diligent  selec- 
tion from  our  fugitive  poetry  might  perhaps  present  us 
with  many  of  these  minor  poems ;  but  the  "  Vers  de 
SocUte^^  form  a  species  of  poetical  composition  which 
may  still  be  employed  with  great  success. 


THE   GENIUS   OF  MOLIERE. 

The  genius  of  comedy  not  only  changes  with  the  age, 
but  appears  different  among  different  people.  Manners 
and  customs  not  only  vary  among  European  nations,  but 
are  alike  mutable  from  one  age  to  another,  even  in  the 
same  people.  These  vicissitudes  are  often  fatal  to  comic 
writers ;  our  old  school  of  comedy  has  been  swept  off 
the  stage :  and  our  present  uniformity  of  manners  has 
deprived  our  modern  writers  of  those  rich  sources  of 
invention  when  persons  living  more  isolated,  society  was 
less  monotonous ;  and  Jonson  and  Shadwell  gave  us 
what  they  called  " the  humours" — that  is,  the  individual 
or  particular  characteristics  of  men.* 

*  Aubrey  has  noted  this  habit  of  our  two  greatest  dramatists,  when 
speaking  of  Shakspearo  ho  says — "  The  humour  of  t)io  constable  in  A 
Midsummer  NighVs  Dream,  he  happend  to  take  at  Grendon  in  Bucks ; 
which  is  the  roade  from  London  to  Stratford ;  and  there  was  living 
that  constable  in  1642,  when  I  first  came  to  Oxon.     Ben  Jonson  and 


THE   GENIUS   OF   MOLlfiRE.  405 

But  however  taste  and  modes  of  thinking  may  be 
inconstant,  and  customs  and  manners  alter,  at  bottom 
the  groundwork  is  Nature's,  in  every  production  of 
comic  genius.  A  creative  genius,  guided  by  an  uner- 
ring instinct,  though  he  draws  after  the  contemporary 
models  of  society,  will  retain  his  pre-eminence  beyond 
his  own  age  and  his  own  nation ;  what  was  temporary 
and  local  disappears,  but  what  appertains  to  universal 
nature  endures.  The  scholar  dwells  on  the  grotesque 
pleasantries  of  the  sarcastic  Aristophanes,  though  the 
Athenian  manners,  and  his  exotic  personages,  have  long 
vanished. 

Moli^re  was  a  creator  in  the  art  of  comedy  j  and  al- 
though his  personages  were  the  contemporaries  of  Louis 
the  Fourteenth,  and  his  manners,  in  the  critical  accepta- 
tion of  the  term,  local  and  temporary,  yet  his  admirable 
genius  opened  that  secret  path  of  Nature,  which  is  so 
rarely  found  among  the  great  names  of  the  most  literary 
nations.  Cervantes  remains  single  in  Spain ;  in  England 
Shakspeare  is  a  consecrated  name ;  and  centuries  may 
pass  away  before  the  French  people  shall  -witness  another 
Moli^re. 

The  history  of  this  comic  poet  is  the  tale  of  powerful 
genius  creating  itself  amidst  the  most  adverse  elements. 
We  have  the  progress  of  that  self-education  which  struck 
out  an  untried  path  of  its  own,  from  the  time  Moli^re 
had  not  yet  acquired  his  art  to  the  glorious  days  when 

he  did  gather  humours  of  men  dayly,  wherever  they  came."  Shadwell, 
whose  best  plays  were  produced  in  the  reigu  of  Charles  II.,  was  a  pro- 
fessed imitator  of  the  style  of  Jonson ;  and  so  closely  described  the 
manners  of  his  day  that  he  was  frequently  accused  of  direct  persooali- 
ties,  and  obliged  to  alter  one  of  his  plays,  The  Humorists,  to  avoid  an 
outcry  raised  against  him.  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  recorded,  in  the  Pre- 
face to  his  "Fortunes  of  Nigel,"  the  obligation  he  was  under  to  Shad- 
well's  comedy,  The  Squire  of  Alsatia,  for  the  vivid  description  it  ena- 
bled him  to  give  of  the  lawless  denizens  of  the  old  Sanct\iary  of  "White- 
friars. — Ed. 


406  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

he  gave  his  country  a  Plautus  in  his  farce,  a  Terence  in  his 
composition,  and  a  Menander  in  his  moral  truths.  But 
the  difficulties  overcome,  and  the  disappointments  incur- 
red, his  modesty  and  his  confidence,  and,  what  was  not 
less  extraordinary,  his  own  domestic  life  in  perpetual 
conflict  with  his  character,  open  a  more  strange  career, 
in  some  respects,  than  has  happened  to  most  others  of 
the  high  order  of  his  genius. 

It  was  long  the  fate  of  Moli^re  to  experience  that  rest- 
less importunity  of  genius  which  feeds  on  itself,  till  it 
discovers  the  pabulum  it  seeks.  Moli^re  not  only  suf- 
fered that  tormenting  impulse,  but  it  was  accompanied 
by  the  unhappiness  of  a  mistaken  direction.  And  this 
has  been  the  lot  of  some  who  for  many  years  have  thus 
been  lost  to  themselves  and  to  the  public. 

A  man  born  among  the  obscure  class  of  the  people, 
thrown  among  the  itinerant  companies  of  actors — for 
France  had  not  yet  a  theatre — occupied  to  his  last  hours 
by  too  devoted  a  management  of  his  own  dramatic  corps ; 
himself,  too,  an  original  actor  in  the  characters  by  him- 
self created ;  with  no  better  models  of  composition  than 
the  Italian  farces  alV  hnprovista^  and  whose  fantastic  gaiety 
he,  to  the  last,  loved  too  well ;  becomes  the  personal  fa- 
vourite of  the  most  magnificent  monarch,  and  the  intimate 
of  the  most  refined  circles.  Thoughtful  observer  of  these 
new  scenes  and  new  personages,  he  sports  with  the  affected 
precieuses  and  tlie  flattering  viarqicises  as  with  the  naive 
ridiculousness  of  the  bourgeois,  and  the  wild  pi'ide  and 
egotism  of  the  parvenus ;  and  with  more  profound  de- 
signs and  a  hardier  hand  unmasks  the  impostures  of  false 
pretenders  in  all  professions.  His  scenes,  such  was  their 
verity,  seem  but  the  reflections  of  his  reminiscences. 
His  fertile  facility  when  touching  on  transient  follies  ;  his 
wide  comprehension,  and  his  moralising  vein,  in  his  more 
elevated  comedy,  dis2)lay,  in  this  painter  of  man,  the 
poet  and  the  philosopher,  and,  above  all,  the  great  moral 


THE   GENIUS   OF   MOLlfiRB.  407 

satirist.  Moli^re  has  shown  that  the  most  successful 
reformer  of  the  manners  of  a  people  is  a  great  comic 
poet. 

The  youth  Pocqtielin — this  was  his  family  name — was 
designed  by  the  tajnssier,  his  father,  to  be  the  heir  of  the 
hereditary  honours  of  an  ancient  standing,  which  had 
maintained  the  Pocquelins  through  four  or  five  genera- 
tions by  the  articles  of  a  furnishing  upholsterer.  His 
grandfather  was  a  haunter  of  the  small  theatres  of  that 
day,  and  the  boy  often  accompanied  this  venerable  critic 
of  the  family  to  his  favourite  recreations.  The  actors 
were  usually  more  excellent  than  their  pieces  ;  some  had 
carried  the  mimetic  art  to  the  perfection  of  eloquent  ges- 
ticulation. In  these  loose  scenes  of  inartificial  and  bur- 
lesque pieces  was  the  genius  of  Moliere  cradled  and 
nursed.  The  changeful  scenes  of  the  Theatre  de  Bour- 
gogne  deeply  busied  the  boy's  imagination,  to  the  great 
detriment  of  the  tajnsserie  of  all  the  Pocquelins. 

The  father  groaned,  the  grandfather  clapped,  the  boy 
remonstrated  till,  at  fourteen  years  of  age,  he  was  con- 
signed, as"  un  mauvais  sujet"  (so  his  father  qualified 
him),  to  a  college  of  the  Jesuits  at  Paris,  where  the  au- 
thor of  the  "  Tartufie  "  passed  five  years,  studying — for 
the  bar ! 

Philosophy  and  logic  were  waters  which  he  deeply 
drank ;  and  sprinklings  of  his  college  studies  often 
pointed  the  satire  of  his  more  finished  comedies.  To 
ridicule  false  learning  and  false  taste  one  must  be  inti- 
mate with  the  ti'ue. 

On  his  return  to  the  metropolis  the  old  humour  broke 
out  at  the  representation  of  the  inimitable  Scaramouch 
of  the  Italian  theatre.  The  irresistible  passion  drove 
him  from  his  law  studies,  and  cast  young  Pocqueliu 
among  a  company  of  amateur  actors,  whose  fame  soon 
enabled  them  not  to  play  gratuitously.  Pocquelin  was 
the  manager  and  the  modeller,  for  under  his  studious  eye 


408  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

this  company  were  induced  to  imitate  Nature  with  the 
simplicity  the  poet  himself  wrote. 

The  prejudices  of  the  day,  both  civil  and  religious,  had 
made  these  private  theatres — no  gx-eat  national  theatre 
yet  existing — the  resource  only  of  the  idler,  the  dissi- 
pated, and  even  of  the  unfortunate  in  society.  The 
youthful  adventurer  aifectionately  offered  a  free  admis- 
sion to  the  dear  Pocquelins.  They  rejected  their  entrees 
with  horror,  and  sent  their  genealogical  tree,  drawn 
afresh,  to  shame  the  truant  who  had  wantoned  into  the 
luxuiiance  of  genius.  To  save  the  honour  of  the  paren- 
tal upholsterers  Pocquelin  concealed  himself  under  the 
immortal  name  of  Moliere. 

The  future  creator  of  French  comedy  had  now  passed 
his  thirtieth  year,  and  as  yet  his  reputation  was  confined 
to  his  own  dramatic  corps — a  pilgrim  in  the  caravan  of 
ambulatory  comedy.  He  had  provided  several  tempo- 
rary novelties.  Boileau  regretted  the  loss  of  one,  ie 
Docteur  Amoureux  •  and  in  others  we  detect  the  abor- 
tive conceptions  of  some  of  his  future  pieces.  The  severe 
judgment  of  Moliere  suffered  his  skeletons  to  perish ; 
but,  when  he  had  discovered  the  art  of  comic  writing, 
with  equal  discernment  he  resuscitated  them. 

Not  only  had  Moliere  not  yet  discovered  the  true  bent 
of  his  genius,  but,  still  more  unfortunate,  he  had  as 
greatly  mistaken  it  as  when  he  proposed  turning  avocat^ 
for  he  imagined  that  his  most  suitable  character  was 
tragic.  He  wrote  a  tragedy,  and  he  acted  in  a  tragedy; 
the  tragedy  he  composed  was  condemned  at  Bordeaux  ; 
the  mortified  poet  flew  to  Grenoble ;  still  the  unlucky 
tragedy  haunted  his  fancy ;  he  looked  on  it  with  paternal 
eyes,  in  whicli  there  were  tears.  Long  after,  when  Ra- 
cine, a  youtli,  offered  him  a  very  unactable  tragedy,* 

*  The  tragedy  written  by  Racine  was  called  Thiagene  ct  Chariclee, 
and  founded  on  the  tale  by  Ileliodorus.  It  waa  the  first  attempt  of 
its  aiUbor,  and  submitted  by  him  to  Moliere,  while  director  of  the 


THE   GENIUS   OF   MOLIERE.  409 

Moliere  presented  him  with  his  own : — "  Take  this,  for  I 
am  convinced  that  the  subject  is  highly  tragic,  notwith- 
standing my  faihire."  The  great  dramatic  poet  of 
France  opened  his  career  by  recomposing  the  condemned 
tragedy  of  the  comic  wit  in  La  Thebdide.  In  the  illu- 
sion that  he  was  a  great  tragic  actor,  deceived  by  his 
own  susceptibility,  though  his  voice  denied  the  tones  of 
piassion,  he  acted  in  one  of  Corneille's  tragedies,  and 
quite  allayed  the  alarm  of  a  rival  company  on  the  an- 
nouncement. It  was  not,  however,  so  when  the  author- 
actor  vivified  one  of  his  own  native  personages ;  then, 
inimitably  comic,  every  new  representation  seemed  to  be 
a  new  creation. 

It  is  a  remarkable  feature,  though  not  perhaps  a  sin- 
gular one,  in  the  character  of  this  great  comic  writer, 
that  he  was  one  of  the  most  serious  of  men,  and  even  of  a 
melancholic  temperament.  One  of  his  lampooners  wrote 
a  satii'ical  comedy  on  the  comic  poet,  where  he  figures  as 
"  Moliere.  hypochondre,"  Boileau,  who  knew  him  inti- 
mately, happily  characterised  Moliere  as  le  Contempla- 
teur.  This  deep  pensiveness  is  revealed  in  his  physiog- 
nomy. 

The  genius  of  Moliere,  long  undiscovered  by  himself, 
in  its  first  attempts  in  a  higher  walk  did  not  move  alone; 
it  was  crutched  by  imitation,  and  it  often  deigned  to 
\  plough  with  another's  heifer.  He  copied  whole  scenes 
from  Italian  comedies  and  plots  from  Italian  novelists : 
his  sole  merit  was  their  improvement.  The  great  comic 
satirist,  who  hereafter  was  to  people  the  stage  tvith  a 
dramatic  crowd  who  were  to  live  on  to  posterity,  had 
not  yet  struck  at  that  secret  vein  of  originality — the 
fairy  treasure  which  one   day  was  to  cast  out  such  a 

Theatre  of  the  Palais  Royal;  the  latter  had  no  favourable  impression 
of  its  success  if  produced,  but  suggested  La  Tliehaide  as  a  subject  for 
his  genius,  and  advanced  the  young  poet  100  louis  while  engaged 
on  his  work,  which  was  successfully  produced  in  1664. — Ed. 


410  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

prodigality  of  invention.  His  two  first  comedies, 
Zi'Etourdi  and  Le  Depit  Amoureux,  which  he  had  only 
ventured  to  bring  out  in  a  jirovincial  theati'e,  were 
grafted  on  Italian  and  Spanish  comedy,  Nothing  more 
original  offered  to  his  imagination  than  the  Roman,  the 
Italian,  and  the  Spanish  drama ;  the  cunning  adroit 
slave  of  Terence ;  the  tricking,  bustling  Gracioso  of 
modern  Spain ;  old  fathers,  the  dupes  of  some  scape- 
grace, or  of  their  own  senile  follies,  with  lovers  sighing 
at  cross-purposes.  The  germ  of  his  future  powers  may, 
indeed,  be  discovered  in  these  two  comedies,  for  insensi- 
bly to  himself  he  had  fallen  into  some  scenes  of  natural 
simplicity.  In  1? Etourdi^  Mascarille,  "  le  roi  des  servi- 
teurs,"  which  Moli^re  himself  admirably  personated,  is 
one  of  those  defunct  characters  of  the  Italian  comedy  no 
longer  existing  in  society ;  yet,  like  our  Touchstone,  but 
infinitely  richer,  this  new  ideal  personage  still  delights 
by  the  fertility  of  his  expedients  and  his  perpetual  and 
vigorous  gaiety.  In  Le  Depit  Atnoureux  is  the  exquis- 
ite scene  of  the  quarrel  and  reconciliation  of  the  lovers. 
In  this  fine  scene,  though  perhaps  but  an  amplification 
of  the  well-known  ode  of  Horace,  Donee  gratus  eram  tibi^ 
Moliei-e  consulted  his  own  feelings,  and  betrayed  his 
future  genius. 

It  was  after  an  interval  of  three  or  four  years  that  the 
provincial  celebrity  of  these  comedies  obtained  a  repre- 
sentation at  Paris ;  their  success  was  decisive.  This  was 
an  evidence  of  public  favour  which  did  not  accorai)any 
Moliere's  more  finished  productions,  which  were  so  far 
unfortunate  that  they  were  more  intelligible  to  the  few ; 
in  fact,  the  first  comedies  of  Moli^re  were  not  written 
above  the  popular  taste  ;  the  spirit  of  true  comedy,  in  a 
profound  knowledge  of  the  heart  of  man,  and  in  the  deli- 
cate discrimination^  of  individual  character,  was  yet  un- 
known. Moliere  was  satisfied  to  excel  his  predecessors, 
but  he  had  not  yet  learned  his  art. 


THE  GENIUS   OF  MOLI^RE.  411 

The  rising  poet  was  now  earnestly  souglit  after ;  a 
more  extended  circle  of  society  now  engaged  bis  contem- 
plative habits.  He  looked  around  on  living  scenes  no 
longer  through  the  dim  spectacles  of  the  old  comedy,  and 
he  projected  a  new  species,  which  was  no  longer  to  de- 
pend on  its  conventional  grotesque  personages  and  its 
forced  incidents;  he  aspired  to  please  a  more  critical 
audience  by  making  his  dialogue  the  conversation  of  so- 
ciety, and  his  characters  its  portraits. 

Introduced  to  the  literary  coterie  of  the  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet,  a  new  view  opened  on  the  favoured  poet.  To 
occupy  a  seat  in  this  envied  circle  was  a  distinction  in 
society.  The  professed  object  of  this  reunion  of  nobility 
and  literary  persons,  at  the  hotel  of  the  Marchioness  of 
Rambouillet,  was  to  give  a  higher  tone  to  all  France,  by 
the  cultivation  of  the  language,  the  intellectual  refine- 
ment of  their  compositions,  and  last,  but  not  least,  to 
inculcate  the  extremest  delicacy  of  manners.  The  recent 
civil  dissensions  had  often  violated  the  urbanity  of  the 
court,  and  a  grossness  prevailed  in  conversation  which 
offended  the  scrupulous.  This  critical  cii-cle  was  composed 
of  both  sexes.  They  were  to  be  the  arbiters  of  taste, 
the.legislatoi's  of  criticism,  and,  what  was  less  tolerable, 
the  models  of  genius.  No  work  was  to  be  stamped  into 
currency  which  bore  not  the  mint -mark  of  the  hotel. 

In  the  annals  of  fashion  and  literatui*e  no  coterie  has 
presented  a  more  instructive  and  amusing  exhibition  of 
the  abuses  of  learning,  and  the  aberrations  of  ill-regulated 
imaginations,  than  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet,  by  its  in- 
genious absurdities.  Their  excellent  design  to  refine  the 
language,  the  manners,  and  even  morality  itself,  branched 
out  into  every  species  of  false  refinement ;  theii*  science 
ran  into  trivial  pedantries,  their  style  into  a  fantastic 
jargon,  and  their  spiritualising  delicacy  into  the  very 
puritanism  of  prudery.  Their  frivolous  distinction  be- 
tween the  mind  and  the  heart,  which  could  not  always 


412  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

be  made  to  go  together,  often  perplexed  them  as  much 
as  their  own  jargon,  which  was  not  always  intelligible, 
even  to  the  initiated.  The  French  Academy  is  said  to 
have  originated  in  the  first  meetings  of  the  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet ;  and  it  is  probable  that  some  sense  and 
taste,  in  its  earliest  days,  may  have  visited  this  society, 
for  we  do  not  begin  such  refined  follies  without  some 
show  of  reason. 

The  local  genius  of  the  hotel  was  feminine,  though  the 
most  glorious  men  of  the  literature  of  France  were  among 
its  votaries.  The  great  magnet  was  the  famed  Mademoi- 
selle Scudery,  whose  voluminous  romances  were  their 
code ;  and  it  is  supposed  these  tomes  preserve  some  of 
their  lengthened  conversazio7ies.  In  the  novel  system  of 
gallantry  of  this  great  inventor  of  amorous  and  metaphy- 
sical "  twaddle,"  the  ladies  were  to  be  approached  as 
beings  nothing  short  of  celestial  paragons  ;  they  were 
addressed  in  a  language  not  to  be  found  iu  any  dictionary 
but  their  own,  and  their  habits  were  more  fantastic  than 
their  language :  a  sort  of  domestic  chivalry  formed  their 
etiquette.  Their  baptismal  names  were  to  them  profane, 
and  their  assumed  ones  were  drawn  from  the  folio  roman- 
ces— those  Bibles  of  love.  At  length  all  ended  in  a  sort 
of  Freemasonry  of  gallantry,  which  had  its  graduated 
orders,  and  whoever  was  not  admitted  into  the  mysteries 
was  not  permitted  to  prolong  his  existence — that  is,  his 
residence  among  them.  The  apprenticeship  of  the  craft 
was  to  be  served  under  certain  Introducers  to  Ruelles. 

Their  card  of  invitation  was  cither  a  rondeau  or  an 
enigma,  which  served  as  a  subject  to  open  conversation. 
The  lady  received  her  visitors  reposing  on  that  throne  of 
beauty,  a  bed  placed  in  an  alcove ;  the  toilet  was  mag- 
nificently arranged.  The  space  between  the  bed  and  the 
wall  was  called  the  liuelle*  tlie  diminutive  of  la  Rue  ; 

*  In  a  portion  of  tlio  ancient  Louvre,  still  prosorvcl  amid  tlio  chan<?e3 
to  which  it  has  been  subJ3ctod,  is  the  old  wainscoted  bedroom  of  the 


THE  GENIUS  OF  MOLlllRB.  41 3 

and  in  this  narrow  street,  or  "  Fop's  alley,"  walked  the 
favoured.  But  the  chevalier  who  was  graced  by  the 
honorary  title  of  PAlcoviste,  was  at  once  master  of  the 
household  and  master  of  the  ceremonies.  His  character 
is  pointedly  defined  by 'St.  Evremond,  as  "  a  lover  whom 
the  Precieuse  is  to  love  without  enjoyment,  and  to  enjoy 
in  good  earnest  her  husband  with  aversion."  The  scene 
ofiered  no  indecency  to  such  delicate  minds,  and  much 
less  the  impassioned  style  which  passed  between  les  chhres^ 
as  they  called  themselves.  Whatever  offered  an  idea,  of 
what  their  jargon  denominated  charnelle,  was  treason 
and  exile.  Years  passed  ere  the  hand  of  the  elected 
maiden  was  kissed  by  its  martyi-.  The  celebrated  Julia 
d'Angennes  was  beloved  by  the  Duke  de  Montausier,  but 
fourteen  years  elapsed  ere  she  would  yield  a  "  yes." 
When  the  faithful  Julia  was  no  longer  blooming,  the  Al- 
coviste  duke  gratefully  took  up  the  remains  of  her 
beauty. 

Their  more  curious  project  was  the  reform  of  the  style 
of  conversation,  to  purify  its  grossness,  and  invent  novel 
terms  for  familiar  objects.  Menage  drew  up  a  "  Petition 
of  the  Dictionaries,"  which,  by  their  severity  of  taste, 
had  nearly  become  superannuated.  They  succeeded 
better  with  the  marchandes  des  modes  and  the  jewellers, 
furnishing  a  vocabulary  excessively  precieuse,  by  which 
people  bought  their  old  wares  with  new  names.  At 
length  they  were  so  successful  in  their  neology,  that  with 
great  difficulty  they  understood  one  another.  It  is,  how- 
ever, worth  observation,  that  the  orthography  invented 
by  th.Q  precieuses — who,  for  their  convenience,  rejected  all 
the  redundant  letters  in  words — was  adopted,  and  is  now 
used ;  and  their  pride  of  exclusiveness  in  society  intro- 
duced the  singular  term  s'encanailler,  to  desciibe  a 
person  who  haunted  low  company,  while  their  morbid 

great  Henry  IV.,  with  the  carved  recess  and  the  rwUle,  as  described 
•  above :  it  is  a  most  interesting  fragment  of  regal  domestic  life. — Ed. 


414  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

purity  had  ever  on  their  lips  the  word  obscenite,  tenas 
which  Molii^re  ridicules,  but  whose  expressiveness  has 
preserved  them  in  the  language. 

Ridiculous  as  some  of  these  extravagances  now  appear 
to  us,  they  had  been  so  closely  interwoven  with  the 
elegance  of  the  higher  ranks,  and  so  intimately  associated 
with  genius  and  literature,  that  the  veil  of  fashion  con- 
secrated almost  the  mystical  society,  since  we  find  among 
its  admirers  the  most  illustrious  names  of  France. 

Into  this  elevated  and  artificial  circle  of  society  our 
youthful  and  unsophisticated  poet  was  now  thrown,  with 
a  mind  not  vitiated  by  any  prepossessions  of  false  taste, 
studious  of  nature  and  alive  to  the  ridiculous.  But  how 
was  the  comic  genius  to  strike  at  the  follies  of  his  illus- 
trious friends — to  strike,  but  not  to  wound  ?  A  provin- 
cial poet  and  actor  to  enter  hostilely  into  the  sacred 
precincts  of  these  Exclusives  ?  Tormented  by  his  genius 
Moli^re  produced  Z/es  Precieuses  Ridicules,  but  admirably 
parried,  in  his  preface,  any  application  to  them,  by  aver- 
ring that  it  was  aimed  at  their  imitators — their  spurious 
mimics  in  the  country.  The  Precieuses  Hidicules  was 
acted  in  the  presence  of  the  assembled  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet  with  immense  applause.  A  central  voice  from 
the  pit,  anticipating  the  host  of  enemies  and  the  fame  of 
the  reformer  of  comedy,  exclaimed,  "Take  courage, 
Moli^re,  this  is  true  comedy."  The  learned  Menage  was 
the  only  member  of  the  society  who  had  the  good  sense 
to  detect  the  drift ;  he  perceived  the  snake  in  the  grass. 
"  We  must  now,"  said  this  sensible  pedant  (in  a  remote 
allusion  to  the  fate  of  idolatry  and  the  introduction  of 
Christianity)  to  the  poetical  pedant,  Chapelain,  "  follow 
the  counsel  which  St.  Remi  gave  to  Clovis — we  must 
burn  all  that  we  adored,  and  adore  what  we  have  burned." 
The  success  of  the  comedy  was  universal ;  the  company 
doubled  their  prices ;  the  country  gentry  flocked  to 
witness  the  marvellous  novelty,  which  far  exposed  that 


THE  GENIUS  OF  MOLI^RB.  415 

false  taste,  that  romance-impertinence,  and  that  sickly 
affectation  which  had  long  disturbed  the  quiet  of  families. 
Cervantes  had  not  struck  more  adroitly  at  Spanish  rodo- 
montade. 

At  this  universal  reception  of  the  Precieuses  Midicules^ 
Moli^re,  it  is  said,  exclaimed — "  I  need  no  longer  study 
Plautus  and  Terence,  nor  poach  in  the  fragments  of 
Menander  ;  I  have  only  to  study  the  world."  It  may  be 
doubtful  whether  the  great  comic  satirist  at  that  moment 
caught  the  sudden  revelation  of  his  genius,  as  he  did 
subsequently  in  his  Tartuffe,  his  Misanthrope^  his  Bour- 
geois Gentilhomnie,  and  others.  The  Precieuses  Pidi- 
cules  was  the  germ  of  his  more  elaborate  Femmes  Savan- 
tes,  which  was  not  produced  till  after  an  interval  of  twelve 
years. 

Moli^re  returned  to  his  old  favourite  canevas,  or  plots 
of  Italian  farces  and  novels,  and  Spanish  comedies,  which, 
being  always  at  hand,  furnished  comedies  of  intrigue. 
U'Ecole  des  3faris  is  an  inimitable  model  of  this  class. 

But  comedies  which  derive  their  chief  interest  from 
the  ingenious  mechanism  of  their  plots,  however  poignant 
the  delight  of  the  artifice  of  the  denouement^  are  some- 
what like  an  epigram,  once  known,  the  brilliant  point  is 
blunted  by  repetition.  This  is  not  the  fate  of  those 
representations  of  men's  actions,  passions,  and  manners, 
in  the  more  enlarged  sphere  of  human  nature,  where  an 
eternal  interest  is  excited,  and  will  charm  on  the  tenth 
repetition. 

No  !  Moli^re  had  not  yet  discovered  his  true  genius ; 
he  was  not  yet  emancipated  from  his  old  seductions.  A 
rival  company  was  reputed  to  have  the  better  actors  for 
tragedy,  and  Moli^re  resolved  to  compose  an  heroic 
drama  on  the  passion  of  jealousy — a  favorite  one  on 
which  he  was  incessantly  ruminating.  Pon  Garcie  de 
Navarre,  ou  Le  Prince  tTaloux,  the  hero  personated  by 
himself,  terminated  by  the  hisses  of  the  audience. 


4:16  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

The  fall  of  the  Prince  Jaloux  was  nearly  fatal  to  the 
tender  reputation  of  the  poet  and  the  actor.  The  world 
became  critical :  the  marquises,  and  the  precieuses,  and 
recently  the  bourgeois,  who  were  sore  from  Sganarelle^ 
ou  Le  Gocu  Iniaginaire,  were  up  in  arms  ;  and  the  rival 
theatra  maliciously  raised  the  halloo,  flattering  them- 
selves that  the  comic  genius  of  their  dreaded  rival  would 
be  extinguished  by  the  ludicrous  convulsed  hiccough  to 
which  Moli^re  was  liable  in  his  tragic  tones,  but  which 
he  adroitly  managed  in  his  comic  parts. 

But  the  genius  of  Moli^re  was  not  to  be  daunted  by 
cabals,  nor  even  injured  by  his  own  imprudence.  Le 
Prince  Jaloux  was  condemned  in  February,  1661,  and 
the  same  year  produced  L''Ecole  des  Maris  and  Les 
Fdcheux.  The  happy  genius  of  the  poet  opened  on  his 
Zoiluses  a  series  of  dramatic  triumphs. 

Foreign  critics — Tiraboschi  and  Schlegel — have  depre- 
ciated the  Frenchman's  invention,  by  insinuating  that 
were  all  that  Moli6re  borrowed  taken  from  him,  little 
would  remain  of  his  own.  But  they  were  not  aware  of 
his  dramatic  creation,  even  when  he  appropriated  the 
slight  inventions  of  others;  they  have  not  distinguished 
the  eras  of  the  genius  of  Moli^re,  and  the  distinct  classes 
of  his  comedies.  Moli^re  had  the  art  of  amalgamating 
many  distinct  inventions  of  others  into  a  single  inimit- 
able whole.  Whatever  might  be  the  herbs  and  the 
reptiles  thrown  into  the  mystical  caldron,  the  incantation 
of  genius  proved  to  be  truly  magical. 

Facility  and  fecundity  may  produce  inequality,  but, 
when  a  man  of  genius  works,  they  are  imbued  with  a 
raciness  which  the  anxious  diligence  of  inferior  minds 
can  never  yield.  Shakspeare,  probably,  poured  forth 
many  scenes  in  this  spirit.  The  multiplicity  of  the 
pieces  of  Moli6re,  their  different  merits,  and  their  distinct 
classes — all  written  within  the  space  of  twenty  years — 
display,  if  any  poet  ever  did,  this  wonder-working  faculty. 


THE   GENIUS  OF   MOLlllRE.  4,17 

The  truth  is.  that  few  of  his  comedies  are  finished  works  ; 
he  nev^er  satisfied  himself,  even  in  his  most  applauded 
productions.  Necessity  bound  him  to  furnish  novelties 
for  his  theatre ;  he  rarely  printed  any  work.  Les 
Fdcheux^  an  admirable  series  of  scenes,  in  three  acts, 
and  in  verse,  was  "  planned,  written,  rehearsed,  and 
represented  in  a  single  fortnight."  Many  of  his  dramatic 
effusions  were  precipitated  on  the  stage ;  the  humorous 
scenes  of  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac  were  thrown  out  to 
enliven  a  royal  fete. 

This  versatility  and  felicity  of  composition  made  every- 
thing with  Molifere  a  subject  for  comedy.  He  invented 
two  novelties,  such  as  the  stage  had  never  before  wit- 
nessed. Instead  of  a  grave  defence  from  the  malice  of 
his  critics,  and  the  flying  gossip  of  the  court  circle, 
Moli^re  found  out  the  art  of  congregating  the  public  to 
The  Quarrels  of  Authors.  He  dramatised  his  critics. 
In  a  comedy  without  a  plot,  and  in  scenes  which  seemed 
rather  spoken  than  written,  and  with  characters  more 
real  than  personated,  he  displayed  his  genius  by  collect- 
ing whatever  had  been  alleged  to  depreciate  it ;  and  La 
Critique  de  VEcole  des  Femtnes  is  still  a  delightful  pro- 
duction. This  singular  drama  resembles  the  sketch- 
book of  an  artist,  the  croquis  of  portraits — the  loose 
hints  of  thoughts,  many  of  which  we  discover  were  more 
fully  delineated  in  his  subsequent  pieces.  With  the 
same  rapid  conception  he  laid  hold  of  his  embarrass- 
ments to  furnish  dramatic  novelties  as  expeditiously  as 
the  king  required.  Louis  XIY.  was  himself  no  indif- 
ferent critic,  and  more  than  once  suggested  an  incident 
or  a  character  to  his  favom-ite  poet.  In  Ij  Impromjitu  de 
Versacclds,  Moli6re  appears  in  his  own  person,  and  in  the 
midst  of  his  whole  company,  with  all  the  irritable  impa- 
tience of  a  manager  who  had  no  piece  ready.  Amidst 
this  green-room  bustle  Moli6re  is  advising,  reprimanding, 
and  imploring,  his  "ladies  and  gentlemen."     The  char- 


4-18  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

acters  in  this  piece  are,  in  fact,  the  actors  themselves, 
who  appear  und(u*  their  OAvn  names  ;  and  Moliere  himself 
reveals  many  fine  touches  of  his  o^vn  poetical  character,  as 
well  as  his  managerial.  The  personal  pleasantries  on  his 
own  performers,  and  the  hints  for  plots,  and  the  sketches 
of  cliaracter  which  the  poet  incidentally  throws  out, 
form  a  perfect  dramatic  novelty.  Some  of  these  he  him- 
self subsequently  adopted,  and  others  have  been  followed 
up  by  some  dramatists  without  rivalling  Moliere.  The 
Figaro  of  Beaumarchais  is  a  descendant  of  the  Mascar- 
ille  of  Moliere ;  but  the  glory  of  rivalling  Moliere  was 
reserved  for  our  own  stage.  Sheridan's  Critic^  or  a 
Tragedy  Rehearsed^  is  a  congenial  dramatic  satire  with 
these  two  pieces  of  Moliere. 

The  genius  of  Moliere  had  now  stepped  out  of  the  re- 
stricted limits  of  the  old  comedy  ;  he  now  looked  on  the 
moving  world  with  other  eyes,  and  he  pursued  the  ridic- 
ulous in  society.  These  fresher  studies  were  going  on  at 
all  hours,  and  every  object  was  contemplated  with  a  view 
to  comedy.  His  most  vital  characters  have  been  traced 
to  living  originals,  and  some  of  his  most  ludicrous  scenes 
had  occurred  in  reality  before  they  delighted  the  audience. 
Monsieur  Jourdain  had  expressed  his  astonishment,  "  qu'il 
faisait  de  la  prose,"  in  the  Count  de  Soissons,  one  of  the 
uneducated  noblemen  devoted  to  the  chase.  The  me- 
morable scene  between  Trissotin  and  Vadius,  their 
mutual  compliments  terminating  in  their  mutual  con- 
tempt, had  been  rehearsed  by  their  respective  authors — the 
Abbe  Cottin  and  Menage.  The  stultified  booby  of  Limo- 
ges, Monsieur  de  Pourceaug/iaCy  mid  the  mystified  mil- 
lionaire, Le  Bourgeois  GentUhomme,  were  copied  after 
life,  as  Wcis  Sgaaarelle,  in  Le  Medeciyi  malgre  hit.  The 
portraits  in  that  gallery  of  dramatic  paintings,  Le  Mis- 
anthrope, have  names  inscribed  under  them ;  and  the 
immortal  Tartuffe  was  a  certain  bishop  of  Autun.  No 
dramatist  has  conceived  with  greater  variety  the  female 


THE  GENIUS  OF  MOLi:fcRE.  419 

character ;  the  women  of  Moliere  have  a  distinctness  of 
feature,  and  are  touched  with  a  freshness  of  feeling. 
Moliere  studied  nature,  and  his  comic  humour  is  never 
checked  by  that  unnatural  wit  where  the  poet,  the  more 
he  discovers  himself,  the  farther  he  removes  himself  from 
the  personage  of  his  creation.  The  quickening  spell 
which  hangs  over  the  dramas  of  Moliere  is  this  close  at- 
tention to  nature,  wherein  he  greatly  resembles  our 
Shakspeare,  for  all  springs  from  its  source.  His  unob- 
trusive genius  never  occurs  to  us  in  following  up  his  char- 
acters, and  a  whole  scene  leaves  on  our  mind  a  complete 
but  imperceptible  effect. 

The  style  of  Moliere  has  often  been  censured  by  the 
fastidiousness  of  his  native  critics,  as  has  and  du  style 
familier.  This  does  not  offend  the  foreigner,  who  is 
often  struck  by  its  simplicity  and  vigour.  Moliere  pre- 
ferred the  most  popular  and  naive  expressions,  as  well  as 
the  most  natural  incidents,,  to  a  degree  which  startled 
the  morbid  delicacy  of  fashion  and  fashionable  critics. 
He  had  frequent  occasions  to  resist  their  petty  remon- 
strances ;  and  whenever  Moliere  introduced  an  incident, 
or  made  an  allusion  of  which  he  knew  the  truth,  and 
which  with  him  had  a  settled  meaning,  this  master  of 
human  life  trusted  to  his  instinct  and  his  art. 

This  pure  and  simple  taste,  ever  rare  at  Paris,  was  the 
happy  poition  of  the  genius  of  this  Frenchman.  Hence 
he  d^ghted  to  try  his  farcical  pieces,  for  we  cannot  im- 
agine that  they  were  his  more  elevated  comedies,  on  his 
old  maid-servant.  This  maid,  probably,  had  a  keen  relish 
for  comic  humour,  for  once  when  Moliere  read  to  her  the 
comedy  of  another  writer  as  his  own,  she  soon  detected 
the  trick,  declaring  that  it  could  not  be  her  master's. 
Hence,  too,  our  poet  invited  even  children  to  be  present 
on  such  rehearsals,  and  at  certain  points  would  watch 
their  emotions.  Hence,  too,  in  his  character  of  manager, 
he  taught  his  actors  to  study  nature.     An  actress,  apt  to 


420  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

speak  freely,  told  him,  "  You  torment  us  all ;  but  you 
never  speak  to  my  husband."  This  man,  originally  a 
candle-snuifet,  was  a  perfect  child  of  nature,  and  acted 
the  Thomas  Diaforius,  in  Le  Malade  Imaginaire.  Moli6re 
replied,  "  I  should  be  sorry  to  say  a  word  to  him ;  I  should 
spoil  his  acting.  Nature  has  provided  him  with  better 
lessons  to  perform  his  parts  than  any  which  I  could  give 
him."  We  may  imagine  Shakspeare  thus  addressing  his 
company,  had  the  poet  been  also  the  manager. 

A  remarkable  incident  in  the  history  of  the  genius  of 
Moli^re  is  the  frequent  recurrence  of  the  poet  to  the 
passion  of  jealousy.  The  "jaundice  in  the  lover's  eye," 
he  has  painted  with  every  tint  of  his  imagination.  "  The 
green-eyed  monster  "  takes  all  shapes,  and  is  placed  in 
every  position.  Solemn,  or  gay,  or  satirical,  he  some- 
times appears  in  agony,  but  often  seems  to  make  its 
"  trifles  light  as  air,"  only  ridiculous  as  a  source  of  con 
solation.  Was  Le  Gontemplateur  comic  in  his  melan 
choly,  or  melancholy  in  his  comic  humour  ? 

The  truth  is,  that  the  poet  himself  had  to  pass  through 
those  painful  stages  which  he  has  dramatised.  The  do- 
mestic life  of  Moli^re  was  itself  very  dramatic ;  it  afforded 
Goldoni  a  comedy  of  five  acts,  to  reveal  the  secrets  of  the 
family  circle  of  Molii^re ;  and  I'Abbate  Chiari,  an  Italian 
novelist  and  playwright,  has  taken  for  a  comic  subject, 
JHoU^re,  the  Jealous  Husband. 

The  Fi-ench,  in  their  "  petite  morale "  on  co^ugal 
fidelity,  appear  so  tolerant  as  to  leave  little  sympathy 
for  the  real  sufferer.  Why  should  they  else  have  treated 
domestic  jealousy  as  a  foible  for  ridicule,  rather  than  a 
subject  for  deep  passion?  Their  tragic  drama  exhibits 
no  Othello,  nor  their  comedy  a  Kitely,  or  a  Suspicious 
Husband.  Moli6re,  while  his  own  heart  was  the  victim, 
conformed  to  the  national  taste,  by  often  placing  the 
object  on  its  comic  side.  Domestic  jealousy  is  a  passion 
which  admits  of  a  great  diversity  of  subjects,  from  the 


THE   GENIUS   OF   MOLTi:RE.  421 

tragic  01'  the  pathetic,  to  the  absurd  and  the  ludicrous. 
We  liave  them  all  in  Moliere.  Molicre  often  was  him- 
self "  Le  Cocu  Imaginaire ;"  he  had  been  in  the  position 
of  the  guardian  in  U'Ecole  des  Maris.  Like  Arnolphe 
in  IjEcole  des  Femmes^  he  had  taken  on  himself  to  rear 
a  young  wife  who  played  the  same  part,  though  with  less 
innocence ;  and  like  the  Misanthrope,  where  the  scene 
between  Alceste  and  Celimene  is  "  une  des  plus  fortes 
qui  existant  au  theatre,"  he  was  deeply  entangled  in  the 
wily  cruelties  of  scornful  coquetry,  and  we  know  that  at 
times  he  suffered  in  the  "  hell  of  lovers "  the  torments 
of  his  own  Jealous  Prince. 

When  this  poet  cast  his  fate  with  a  troop  of  comedians, 
as  the  manager,  and  whom  he  never  would  abandon,  when 
at  the  height  of  his  fortune,  could  he  avoid  accustoming 
himself  to  the  relaxed  habits  of  that  gay  and  sorrowful 
race,  who, "  of  imagination  all  compact,"  too  often  partake 
of  the  passions  they  inspire  in  the  scene  ?  The  first  actress, 
Madame  Bejard,  boasted  that,  "with  the  exception  of  the 
poet,  she  had  never  dispensed  her  personal  favours  but 
to  the  aristocracy.  The  constancy  of  Molicre  was  inter- 
rupted by  another  actress,  Du  Pare ;  beautiful  but  insen- 
sible, she  only  tormented  the  poet,  and  furnished  him 
with  some  severe  lessons  for  the  coquetry  of  his  Celimene, 
in  Xe  Misanthrope.  The  facility  of  the  transition  of  the 
tender  passion  had  more  closely  united  the  susceptible 
poet  fo  Mademoiselle  de  Brie.  But  Madame  Bejard,  not 
content  to  be  the  chief  actress,  and  to  hold  her  partner- 
ship in  "  the  properties,"  to  retain  her  ancient  authority 
over  the  poet,  introduced,  suddenly,  a  blushing  daughter, 
some  say  a  younger  sister,  who  had  hitherto  resided  at 
Avignon,  and  who  she  declared  was  the  offspring  of  the 
count  of  Modena,  by  a  secret  marriage.  Armande  Be- 
jard soon  attracted  the  paternal  attentions  of  the  poet. 
She  became  the  secret  idol  of  his  retired  moments,  while 
he  fondly  thought  that  he  could  mould  a  young  mind,  in 


4,22  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

its  innocence,  to  his  own  sympathies.  The  mother  and 
the  daughter  never  agreed.  Armande  sought  his  protec- 
tion ;  and  one  day  rushing  into  his  study,  declared  that 
she  would  marry  her  friend.  The  elder  Bejard  freely 
consented  to  avenge  herself  on  De  Brie.  De  Brie  was 
indulgent,  though  "the  little  creature,"  she  observed, 
was  to  be  yoked  to  one  old  enough  to  be  her  father. 
Under  the  same  roof  were  now  heard  the  voices  of  the 
three  females,  and  Moli^re  meditating  scenes  of  feminine 
jealousies. 

Moliere  was  fascinated  by  his  youthful  wife;  her 
lighter  follies  charmed :  two  years  riveted  the  connubial 
chains.  Moliere  was  a  husband  who  was  always  a  lover. 
The  actor  on  the  stage  was  the  very  man  he  personated. 
Mademoiselle  Moliere,  as  she  was  called  by  the  public, 
was  the  Lucile  in  Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme.  With 
what  fervour  the  poet  feels  her  neglect !  with  what  eager- 
ness he  defends  her  from  the  animadversions  of  the  friend 
who  would  have  dissolved  the  spell ! 

The  poet  was  doomed  to  endure  more  poignant  sorrows 
than  slights.  Mademoiselle  had  the  art  of  persuading 
Moliere  that  he  was  only  his  own  "  cocu  imaginaire ;" 
but  these  domestic  embarrassments  multiplied.  Made- 
moiselle, reckless  of  the  distinguished  name  she  bore, 
while  she  gratified  her  personal  vanity  by  a  lavish  ex- 
penditure, practised  that  artful  coquetry  which  attracted 
a  crowd  of  loungers.  Moliere  found  no  repose  Mi  his 
own  house,  and  retreated  to  a  country-house,  where,  how- 
ever, his  restless  jealousy  often  drove  him  back  to  scenes 
which  he  trembled  to  witness.  At  length  came  the  last 
argument  of  outraged  matrimony — he  threatened  con- 
finement. To  prevent  a  pn))lic  rupture,  Moliere  consent- 
ed to  live  under  the  same  roof,  and  only  to  meet  at  the 
theatre.  Weak  only  in  love,  however  divided  from  his 
wife,  Moli6re  i-ernained  lier  perpetual  lover.  He  said,  in 
confidence,  "  I  am  born  with  every  disposition  to  tender- 


THE   GENIUS   OF   ilOLIERE.  423 

ness.  When  I  married,  slie  was  too  young  to  betray  any 
evil  inclinations.  My  studies  were  devoted  to  her,  but  I 
soon  discovered  her  indifference.  I  ascribed  it  to  her 
temper ;  her  foolish  passion  for  Count  Guiche  made  too 
much  noise  to  leave  me  even  this  apparent  tranquillity 
I  resolved  to  live  with  her  as  an  honourable  man,  whose 
reputation  does  not  depend  on  the  bad  conduct  of  his 
wife.  My  kindness  has  not  changed  her,  but  my  com- 
passion has  increased.  Those  who  have  not  experienced 
these  delicate  emotions  have  never  truly  loved.  In  her 
absence  her  image  is  before  me ;  in  her  presence,  I  am 
deprived  of  all  reflection  ;  I  have  no  longer  eyes  for  her 
defects ;  I  only  view  her  amiable.  Is  not  this  the  last 
extreme  of  folly  ?  And  are  you  not  surprised  that  I, 
reasoning  as  I  do,  am  only  sensible  of  the  weakness 
which  I  cannot  throw  ofi"?" 

Few  men  of  genius  have  left  in  their  writings  deeper 
impressions  of  their  personal  feelings  than  Moliere. 
With  strong  passions  in  a  feeble  frame,  he  had  duped  his 
imagination  that,  like  another  Pygmalion,  he  would 
create  a  woman  by  his  own  art.  In  silence  and  agony 
he  tasted  the  bitter  fruits  of  the  disordered  habits  of  the 
life  of  a  comedian,  a  manager,  and  a  poet.  His  income 
was  splendid;  but  he  himself  was  a  stranger  to  dissipa- 
tion. He  was  a  domestic  man,  of  a  pensive  and  even 
melancholy  temperament.  Silent  and  reserved,  unless  in 
conversation  viith  that  more  intimate  circle  whose  litera- 
ture aided  his  genius,  or  whose  friendship  consoled  for 
his  domestic  disturbances,  his  habits  were  minutely  me- 
thodical ;  the  strictest  order  was  observed  throughout 
his  establishment ;  the  hours  of  dinner,  of  writing,  of 
amusement,  were  allotted,  and  the  slightest  derangement 
in  his  own  apartment  excited  a  morbid  irritability  which 
would  interrupt  his  studies  for  whole  days. 

Who,  without  this  tale  of  Moliere,  could  conjecture, 
that  one  skilled  in  the  workings  of  our  nature  would 


424  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

have  ventured  on  the  perilous  experiment  of  equalizing 
sixteen  years  against  forty — weighing  roses  against  grey 
locks — to  convert  a  wayward  coquette,  through  her 
capricious  womanhood,  into  an  attached  wife?  Yet, 
althoxigh  Mademoiselle  could  cherish  no  personal  love 
for  the  intellectual  being,  and  hastened  to  change  the 
immortal  name  she  bore  for  a  more  terrestrial  man,  she 
seems  to  have  been  impi*essed  by  a  perfect  conviction  of 
his  creative  genius.  When  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  in 
the  pride  of  prelacy,  refused  the  rights  of  sepulture  to 
the  corpse  of  Moliere  the  actoe,  it  was  her  voice  which 
reminded  the  world  of  Moliere  the  poet,  exclaiming — • 
*'  Have  they  denied  a  grave  to  the  man  to  whom  Greece 
would  have  raised  an  altar  !" 


THE  SENSIBILITY  OF  RACINE. 

The  "  Memoirs  of  the  poet  Racine,"  composed  by  his 
son,  who  was  himself  no  contemptible  poet,  may  be 
classed  among  those  precious  pieces  of  biography  so  de- 
lightful to  the  philosopher  who  studies  human  nature, 
and  the  literary  man  whose  curiosity  is  interested  in  the 
history  of  his  republic.  Such  works  are  rare,  and  rank 
in  merit  next  to  autobiographies.  Such  biographical 
sketches,  like  Boswell's  of  Johnson,  contain  Avhat  wo 
often  regret  is  wanting  in  the  more  regular  life  of  a 
professed  biographer.  These  desultory  memoirs  interest 
by  their  warmth,  their  more  personal  acquaintance  with 
the  hero,  and  abound  with  those  minuter  strokes  which 
give  BO  much  life  to  the  individual  character. 

The  prominent  feature  in  the  character  of  Racine  was 
an  excessive  tenderness  of  feeling ;  his  profound  sensi- 
bility even  to  its  infirmity,  the  tears  which  would  cover 
his  face,  and  the  agony  in  his  heart,  were  perhaps  na- 
tional.    Hut   if  this  sensibility  produced  at  times  the 


SENSIBILITY  OF  RACINE.  425 

softest  emotions,  if  it  made  him  the  poet  of  lovers,  and 
even  the  poet  of  imagination,  it  also  rendered  him  too 
feelingly  alive  to  criticism,  it  embittered  his  days  with 
too  keen  a  perception  of  the  domestic  miseries  which  all 
men  must  alike  undergo. 

During  a  dramatic  performance  at  St.  Cyr,  the  youth- 
ful representative  of  Esther  suddenly  forgot  her  part ; 
the  agitated  poet  exclaimed,  "Oh,  mademoiselle,  you 
are  ruining  my  piece !"  Terrified  at  this  repi-imand,  the 
young  actress  wept ;  the  poet  flew  to  her,  wiped  away 
her  tears,  and  vnth.  contagious  sympathy  shed  tears  him- 
self. "  I  do  not  hesitate,"  says  Louis  Racine,  "  to  relate 
such  minute  circumstances,  because  this  facility  of  shed- 
ding tears  shows  the  goodness  of  the  heart,  according  to 
the  observation  of  the  ancients — 

ayaOol  6'  apiddKpveg  avdpcq. 

This  morbid  state  of  feeling  made  his  whole  literary 
life  uneasy;  unjust  criticism  affected  him  as  much  as  the 
most  poignant,  and  there  was  nothing  he  dreaded  more 
than  that  his  son  should  become  a  writer  of  tragedies. 
*'I  will  not  dissimulate,"  he  says,  addressing  his  son, 
"  that  in  the  heat  of  composition  we  are  not  sometimes 
pleased  with  ourselves ;  but  you  may  believe  me,  when 
the  day  after  we  look  over  our  work,  we  are  astonished 
not  to  find  that  excellence  we  admired  in  the  evening ; 
and  when  we  reflect  that  even  what  we  find  good  ought 
to  be  still  better,  and  how  distant  we  are  still  from  per- 
fection, we  are  discouraged  and  dissatisfied.  Besides  all 
this,  although  the  approbation  I  have  received  has  been 
very  flattering,  the  least  adverse  criticism,  even  miserable 
as  it  might  be,  has  always  occasioned  me  more  vexation 
than  all  the  praise  I  received  could  give  me  pleasure." 
And,  again,  he  endeavors  to  impress  on  him  that  the 
favour  he  received  from  the  world  he  owed  not  to  his 
verses.     "Do  not  imagine  that  they  are  my  verses  that 


426  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

attract  all  these  kindnesses.  Corneille  composes  verses? 
a  hundred  times  finer  than  mine,  but  no  one  regards  him. 
Ilis  verses  are  only  applauded  from  the  mouths  of  the 
actors.  I  do  not  tire  men  of  the  world  by  reciting  my 
works ;  I  never  allude  to  them ;  I  endeavour  to  amuse 
them  with  matters  which  please  them.  My  talent  in 
their  company  is,  not  to  make  them  feel  that  I  have  any 
genius,  but  to  show  them  that  they  possess  some  them- 
selves. When  you  observe  the  duke  pass  several  hours 
with  me,  you  would  be  surprised,  were  you  present,  that 
he  frequently  quits  me  withou.t  my  having  uttered  three 
words ;  but  gradually  I  put  him  in  a  humour  of  chatting, 
and  he  leaves  me  more  satisfied  with  himself  than  with 
me."  When  Rochefoucault  said  that  Boileau  and  Racine 
had  only  one  kind  of  genius,  and  could  only  talk  about 
their  own  poetry,  it  is  evident  that  the  observation  should 
not  have  extended  to  Racine,  however  it  might  to  Boi- 
leau. It  was  Racine's  excessive  sensibility  which  made 
him  the  finest  dramatic  reciter.  The  celebrated  actress. 
Mademoiselle  Champmesle,*  the  heroine  of  his  tragedies, 
had  no  genius  whatever  for  the  stage,  but  she  had  beauty, 
voice,  and  memory.  Racine  taught  her  first  to  compre- 
hend the  verses  she  was  going  to  recite,  showed  her  the 
appropriate  gesture,  and  gave  her  the  variable  tones, 
which  he  even  sometimes  noted  down.  His  pupil,  faith- 
ful to  her  lessons,  though  a  mere  actress  of  art,  on  the 
stage  seemed  inspired  by  passion ;  and  as  she,  thus 
formed  and  fashioned,  naturally  only  played  thus  eifect- 


*  Racine  first  met  this  actress  at  the  Marquis  de  Sevigno's  petit 
soupcrs ;  so  much  lamented  by  his  more  famous  motlier  in  one  of  her 
edmirnblo  letters,  who  speaks  of  "  the  Raciues  and  the  Despreaux's  " 
who  assisted  his  prodigality.  In  one  of  Miulame  de  Sevigno's  letters, 
dated  in  1072,  slie  somewhat  rashly  declares,  "Racine  now  writes  his 
dramas,  not  for  posterity,  but  for  MadenioisoUo  Champmesle :"  she  had 
then  forsaken  the  marquis  for  the  poet,  who  wrote  Roxane  in  Bajazet 
expressly  for  her. — Ed. 


THE  SENSIBILITY  OF  RACINE.  427 

ively  in  the  dramas  of  her  preceptor,  it  was  supposed 
that  love  for  the  poet  inspired  the  actress. 

When  Racine  read  aloud  he  diffused  his  own  enthusi- 
asm; once  with  Boileau  and  Nicole,  amid  a  literary 
circle,  they  talked  of  Sophocles,  whom  Racine  greatly 
admired,  but  from  whom  he  had  never  dared  to  borrow 
a  tragic  subject.  Taking  up  a  Greek  Sophocles,  and 
translating  the  CEdipus,  the  French  poet  became  so 
deeply  imbued  with  the  Greek  tragedian,  that  his  audit- 
ors caught  all  the  emotions  of  terror  and  pity.  "  I  have 
seen,"  says  one  of  those  aiiditors,  "  our  best  pieces  repre- 
sented by  our  best  actors,  but  never  anything  approached 
the  agitation  which  then  came  over  us ;  and  to  this  dis- 
tant day  I  have  never  lost  the  recollection  of  Racine, 
with  the  volume  in  his  hand,  full  of  emotion,  and  we  all 
breathlessly  pressing  around  him." 

It  was  the  poet's  sensibility  that  urged  him  to  make 
the  most  extraordinary  sacrifice  that  ever  poet  made ; 
he  wished  to  get  rid  entirely  of  that  poetical  fame  to 
which  he  owed  everything,  and  which  was  at  once  his 
pleasure,  his  pride,  and  his  property.  His  education  had 
been  a  religious  one,  in  the  Port-Royal ;  *  but  when 
Nicole,  one  of  that  illustrious  fraternity,  with  undistin 
guishing  fanaticism,  had  once  asserted  that  all  dramatic 
writers  were  public  poisoners  of  souls,  Racine,  in  the 
pride  and  strength  of  his  genius,  had  eloquently  repelled 
the  denouncement.  But  now,  having  yet  only  half  run 
his  unrivalled  course,  he  turned  aside,  relinquished  its 
glory,  repented  of  his  success,  and  resolved  to  write  no 
more  tragedies.f     He  determined  to  enter  into  the  austere 

*  For  an  account  of  this  very  celebrated  religious  foundation,  its  for- 
tunes and  misfortunes,  see  the  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  i.,  p. 
94— Ed. 

f  Racine  ultimately  conceived  an  aversion  for  his  dramatic  offsp  "ng 
and  could  never  be  induced  to  edit  a  proper  edition  of  his  work'  oi 
even  give  a  few  lessons  in  declamation  to  a  juvenile  princess,  who    u«. 


4-28  LITERARY  CHARACTER 

order  of  the  Chartreux  ;  but  his  confessor,  more  rational 
than  his  penitent,  assured  him  that  a  character  so  feeling 
as  his  own,  and  so  long  accustomed  to  the  world,  could 
not  endure  that  terrible  solitude.  He  advised  him  to 
marry  a  woman  of  a  serious  turn,  and  that  little  domes- 
tic occupations  would  withdraw  him  from  the  passion  he 
seemed  most  to  dread,  that  of  writing  verses. 

The  marriage  of  Racine  was  an  act  of  penance — neither 
love  nor  interest  had  any  share  in  the  union.  His  wife 
was  a  good  sort  of  woman,  but  perhaps  the  most  insen- 
sible of  her  sex ;  and  the  properest  person  in  the  world  to 
mortify  the  passion  of  literary  glory,  and  the  momentary 
exultation  of  literary  vanity.*  It  is  scarcely  credible,  but 
most  certainly  true,  since  her  own  son  relates  the  fact, 
that  the  wife  of  Racine  had  neither  seen  acted,  nor  ever 
read,  nor  desired  to  read,  the  tragedies  which  had  ren- 
dered her  husband  so  celebrated  throughout  Europe ;  she 
had  only  learned  some  of  their  titles  in  conversation. 
She  was  as  insensible  to  fortune  as  to  fame.  One  day, 
when  Racine  returned  from  Versailles,  with  the  princely 
gift  from  Louis  XIV.  of  a  purse  of  1000  louis,  he  hastened 
to  embrace  his  wife,  and  to  show  her  the  treasure.  But 
she  was  full  of  trouble,  for  one  of  the  children  for  two 
days  had  not  studied.  "We  will  talk  of  this  another 
time,"  exclaimed  the  poet ;  "  at  present  let  us  be  happy.' 

But  she  insisted  he  ought  instantly  to  reprimand  this 
child,  and  continued  her  complaints;  while  Bolieau  in 
astonishment  paced  to  and  fro,  perhaps  thinking  of  his 
Satire  on  Women,  and  exclaiming,  "  What  insensibility  ! 
Is  it  possible  that  a  purse  of  1000  louis  is  not  worth  a 
thought !"     This  stoical  apathy  did  not  arise  in  Madame 

lected  his  Andromaque  Tor  tho  subject,  perhaps  out  of  compliment  to 
the  poet,  whoso  first  visit  became  in  consequence  his  last. — Kd. 

*  The  lady  ho  chose  was  one  Catherine  do  Romanet,  whoso  family 
was  of  great  respectability  but  of  small  fortune.  She  is  not  described 
fK  jiossessing  any  marked  personal  attractions. — Ed. 


THE   SENSIBILITY   OF   RACINE.  429 

Racine  from  the  grandeur,  but  the  littleness,  of  her  mincL 
Her  prayer-books  and  her  children  were  the  sole  objects 
that  interested  this  good  woman.  Racine's  sensibility 
was  not  mitigated  by  his  marriage;  domestic  sorrows 
weighed  heavily  on  his  spirits :  when  the  illness  of  his 
children  agitated  him,  he  sometimes  exclaimed,  "  Why 
did  I  expose  myself  to  all  this  ?  Why  was  I  persuaded 
not  to  be  a  Chartreux  ?"  His  letters  to  his  children  are 
those  of  a  father  and  a  friend  ;  kind  exhortations,  or  pa- 
thetic reprimands ;  he  enters  into  the  most  domestic 
detail,  while  he  does  not  conceal  from  them  the  msdioc- 
rity  of  their  fortune.  "Had  you  known  him  in  his 
family,"  said  Louis  Racine,  "  you  would  be  more  alive 
to  his  poetical  character,  you  would  then  know  why  his 
verses  are  always  so  full  of  sentiment.  He  was  never 
more  pleased  than  when,  permitted  to  be  absent  from  the 
court,  he  could  come  among  us  to  pass  a  few  days. 
Even  in  the  presence  of  strangers  he  dared  to  be  a  father, 
and  used  to  join  us  in  our  sports.  I  well  remember  our 
processions,  in  which  my  sistei'S  were  the  clergy,  I  the 
rector,  and  the  author  of  'Athaliah,'  chanting  with  us, 
carried  the  cross." 

At  length  this  infirm  sensibility  abridged  his  days. 
He  was  naturally  of  a  melancholic  temperament,  apt  to 
dwell  on  objects  which  occasion  j^ain,  rather  than  on 
those  which  exhilarate.  Louis  Racine  observes  that  his 
character  resembled  Cicero's  description  of  himself,  more 
inclined  to  dread  unfortunate  events,  than  to  hope  for 
happy  ones  ;  semper  tnagis  adversos  rerum  exitus  metuens 
quam  sperans  secundos.  In  the  last  incident  of  his  life 
his  extreme  sensibility  led  him  to  imagine  as  present  a 
misfortune  which  might  never  have  occurred. 

Madame  de  Maintenon,  one  day  in  conversation  with 
the  poet,  alluded  to  the  misery  of  the  people.  Racine 
observed  it  was  the  usual  consequence  of  long  wars :  the 
subject  was  animating,  and  he  entered  into  it  with  all 


430  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

that  enthusiasm  lieculiar  to  himself.  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon  was  charmed  with  his  eloquent  efi'usion,  and 
requested  him  to  give  her  his  observations  in  writing, 
assuring  him  they  should  not  go  out  of  her  hand.  She 
was  reading  his  memoir  when  the  king  entered  her 
apartment ;  he  took  it  up,  and,  after  having  looked  over 
a  few  pages,  he  inquired  with  great  quickness  who  was 
tlie  author.  She  replied  it  was  a  secret ;  but  the  king 
was  peremptory,  and  the  author  was  named.  The  king 
asked  with  great  dissatisfaction,  "  Is  it  because  he  writes 
the  CQOst  perfect  verses,  that  he  thinks  that  he  is  able  to 
become  a  statesman  ?" 

Madame  de  Maintenon  told  the  poet  all  that  had 
passed,  and  declined  to  receive  his  visits  for  the  present. 
Racine  was  shortly  after  attacked  with  violent  fever.  In 
the  languor  of  recovery  he  addressed  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon  to  petition  to  have  his  pension  freed  from  some 
new  tax ;  and  he  added  an  apology  for  his  presumption 
in  suggesting  the  cause  of  the  miseries  of  the  people, 
with  an  humiliation  that  betrays  the  alarms  that  existed 
in  his  mind.  The  letter  is  too  long  to  transcribe,  but  it 
is  a  singular  instance  how  genius  can  degrade  itself 
when  it  has  placed  all  its  felicity  on  the  varying  smiles 
of  those  we  call  the  great.  Well  might  his  friend 
Boileau,  who  had  nothing  of  his  sensibility  nor  imagina- 
tion, exclaim,  with  tis  good  sense,  of  the  court : — 

Quel  s6jour  etranger,  et  pour  vous  et  pour  moi  I 

Racine  afterwards  saw  Madame  de  Maintenon  walking  in 
the  gardens  of  Versailles;  she  drew  aside  into  a  retired 
allee  to  meet  him ;  she  exhorted  him  to  exert  his 
2)atiencc  and  fortitude,  and  told  him  that  all  would  end 
well.  "  No,  madam,"  he  replied,  "  never !"  "  Do  you 
tlicn  doul)t,"  she  said,  "  either  my  lieart,  or  my  influence  ?" 
lie  replied,  "I  acknowledge  your  influence,  and  know 
your  goodness  to  me ;  but  I  have  an  aunt  who  loves  me 


THE   SENSIBILITY   OF   RACINE.  43I 

in  quite  a  different  manner.  That  pious  woman  every 
day  implores  God  to  bestow  on  me  disgrace,  humiliation, 
and  occasions  for  penitence,  and  she  has  more  influence 
than  you."  As  he  said  these  words,  the  sound  of  a 
carriage  was  heard ;  "  The  king  is  coming  !"  said  Madame 
de  Maintenon  ;  "  hide  yourself !" 

To  this  last  point  of  misery  and  degradation  was  this 
great  genius  reduced.  Shortly  after  he  died,  and  was 
buried  at  the  feet  of  his  master  in  the  chapel  of  the  stu- 
dious and  religious  society  of  Port-Koyal. 

The  sacred  dramas  of  Esther  and  Athaliah  were  among 
the  latter  productions  of  Racine.  The  fate  of  Athaliah^ 
his  masterpiece,  was  remarkable.  The  public  imagined 
that  it  was  a  piece  written  only  for  children,  as  it  was 
performed  by  the  young  scholars  of  St.  Cyr,  and  received 
it  so  coldly  that  Kacine  was  astonished  and  disgusted.* 
He  earnestly  requested  Boileau's  opinion,  who  main- 
tained it  was  his  capital  work.  "  I  understand  these 
things,"  said  he,  "and  the  public  y  remendra.''''  The  pre- 
diction was  a  true  one,  but  it  was  accomplished  too  late, 
long  after  the  death  of  the  author ;  it  was  never  appre- 
ciated till  it  was  publicly  performed. 

BoUeau  and  Racine  derived  little  or  no  profit  from  the 
booksellers.  Boileau  particularly,  though  fond  of  money, 
was  so  delicate  on  this  point  that  he  gave  all  his  works 
away.  It  was  this  that  made  him  so  bold  in  railing  at 
those  authors  qui  mettent  leicr  Apollon  aux  gages  d*un 

*They  were  written  at  the  request  of  Madame  de  Maintenon,  for 
the  pupils  of  her  favourite  estabhshraent  at  St.  Cyr;  she  was  anxious 
that  they  should  be  perfect  in  declamation,  and  she  tried  them  with 
the  poet's  Andromaque,  but  they  recited  it  with  so  much  passion  and 
feehng  that  they  alarmed  their  patroness,  who  told  Racine  "  it  was  so 
well  done  that  she  would  be  careful  they  should  never  act  that  drama 
again,"  and  urged  him  to  write  plays  on  sacred  subjects  expressly  for 
their  use.  He  had  not  written  a  play  for  upwards  of  ten  years ;  he 
now  composed  his  Esther,  making  that  character  a  flattering  reflection 
of  Maintenon's  career. — Ed. 


4-32  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

libraire,  and  he  declared  that  he  had  only  inserted  these 

vei'ses, 

Je  sai  qu'ura  noble  esprit  pent  sans  honte  et  sans  crime 
Tirer  de  son  travail  im  tribut  legitime, 

to  console  Racine,  who  had  received  some  profits  froru 
the  printing  of  his  tragedies.  Those  profits  were,  how- 
ever, inconsiderable ;  the  truth  is,  the  king  remunerated 
the  poets. 

Racine's  first  royal  mark  of  favour  was  an  order  signed 
by  Colbert  for  six  hundred  livres,  to  give  him  the  means 
of  continuing  his  studies  of  the  helles-lettres.  He  received, 
by  an  account  found  among  his  papers,  above  forty  thou- 
sand livres  from  the  cassette  of  the  king,  by  the  hand  of 
the  first  valet-de-chambre.  Besides  these  gifts,  Racine 
had  a  pension  of  four  thousand  livres  as  historiographer, 
and  another  pension  as  a  man  of  letters. 

Which  is  the  more  honourable  ?  to  crouch  for  a  salary 
brought  by  the  hand  of  the  first  valet-de-chambre,  or  to 
exult  in  the  tribute  oflered  by  the  public  to  an  author  ? 


OF  STERNE. 

Cervantes  is  immortal — Rabelais  and  Sterne  have 
passed  away  to  the  curious. 

These  fraternal  geniuses  alike  chose  their  subjects 
from  their  own  times.  Cervantes,  with  the  innocent  de- 
sign of  correcting  a  temporary  folly  of  his  countrymen, 
so  that  the  very  success  of  the  design  might  have  proved 
fatal  to  the  work  itself;  for  when  he  had  cut  o^  the 
heads  of  the  Hydra,  an  extinct  monster  might  cease  to 
interest  the  readers  of  other  times,  and  other  manners. 
But  Cervantes,  with  judgment  -equal  to  his  invention, 
and  with  a  cast  of  genius  made  for  all  times,  deliglited 
his  contemporaries  and  charms  his  posterity.     He  looked 


OF   STERNE.  433 

to  the  world  and  collected  othei*  follies  than  the  Spanish 
ones,  and  to  another  age  than  the  administration  of  the 
duke  of  Lerraa;  with  more  genuine  pleasantry  than  any 
writer  from  the  days  of  Lucian,  not  a  solitary  spot  has 
soiled  the  purity  of  his  page ;  while  there  is  scarcely  a 
subject  in  human  nature  for  which  we  might  not  find 
some  apposite  illustration.  His  style,  pure  as  his  thoughts, 
is,  however,  a  magic  which  ceases  to  work  in  all  transla- 
tions, and  Cervantes  is  not  Cervantes  in  English  or  in 
French ;  yet  still  he  retains  his  popularity  among  all  the 
nations  of  Europe ;  which  is  more  than  we  can  say  even 
of  our  Shakspeare ! 

Rabelais  and  Sterne  were  not  perhaps  inferior  in 
genius,  and  they  were  read  with  as  much  avidity  and 
delight  as  the  Spaniai-d.  "Le  docte  Rabelais"  had 
the  learning  which  the  Englishman  wanted;  while  un- 
happily Sterne  undertook  to  satirise  false  erudition, 
which  requires  the  knowledge  of  the  true.  Though  the 
Paperrmnes^  on  whom  Rabelais  has  exhausted  his  gro- 
tesque humour  and  his  caustic  satire,  have  not  yet  walked 
off  the  stage,  we  pay  a  heavy  price  in  the  grossness  of 
his  ribaldry  and  his  tiresome  balderdash  for  odd  stories 
and  flashes  of  witty  humour.  Rabelais  hardly  finds 
readers  even  in  France,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  liter- 
ary antiquaries.  The  day  has  passed  when  a  gay  dis- 
solute abbe  could  obtain  a  rich  abbey  by  getting  Rabelais 
by  heart,  for  the  perpetual  improvement  of  his  patron — 
and  Rabelais  is  now  little  more  than  a  Rabelais  by 
tradition.* 

*  The  clergy  were  not  so  unfavourable  to  Rabelais  as  might  have 
been  expected.  He  was  through  life  protected  by  the  Cardinal  Jean 
du  Bellay,  Bishop  of  Paris,  who  employed  him  in  various  important 
negotiations ;  and  it  is  recorded  of  him  that  he  refused  a  scholar  admit- 
tance to  his  table  because  he  had  not  read  his  worlds.  This  famili- 
arity with  his  grotesque  romance  was  also  shared  by  Cardinal  Duprat 
who  is  said  to  have  always  carried  a  copy  of  it  with  him,  as  if  it  was 
his  breviary  The  anecdote  of  the  priest  who  obtained  promotion  from 
2S 


4:34  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

In  my  youth  the  world  doted  on  Sterne !  Martin  Sher- 
lock ranks  him  among  "  the  luminaries  of  the  century," 
Forty  years  ago,  young  men  in  their  most  facetious 
humours  never  failed  to  find  the  archetypes  of  society  in 
the  Shandy  family — every  good-natured  soul  was  uncle 
Toby,  every  humorist  was  old  Shandy,  every  child  of 
Nature  was  Corporal  Trim  !  It  may  now  be  doubted 
whether  Sterne's  natural  dispositions  were  the  humorous 
or  the  pathetic :  the  pathetic  has  survived  ! 

There  is  nothing  of  a  more  ambiguous  nature  than 
strong  humoiir,  and  Sterne  found  it  to  be  so  ;  and  latterly, 
in  despair,  he  asserted  that  "  the  taste  for  humour  is  the 
gift  of  heaven !"  I  have  frequently  observed  how 
humour,  like  the  taste  for  olives,  is  even  repugnant  to 
some  palates,  and  have  witnessed  the  epicure  of  humour 
lose  it  all  by  discovering  how  some  have  utterly  rejected 
his  favourite  relish  !  Even  men  of  wit  may  not  taste 
humour  !  The  celebrated  Dr.  Cheyne,  who  was  not 
himself  deficient  in  originality  of  thinking  with  great 
learning  and  knowledge,  once  entrusted  to  a  friend 
a  remarkable  literary  confession.  Dr.  Cheyne  assured 
him  that  "he  could  not  read  'Don  Quixote'  with  any 
pleasure,  nor  had  any  taste  for  '  Hudibras'  or  '  Gulliver ;' 
and  that  what  we  call  icit  and  humour  in  these  authors 
he  considered  as  false  ornaments,  and  never  to  be  found 
in  those  compositions  of  the  ancients  which  we  most 
admire  and  esteem."*  Cheyne  seems  to  have  held 
Aristophanes  and  Lucian  monstrously  cheap!  The 
ancients,  indeed,  appear  not  to  liave  possessed  that  comic 
quality  that  we   understand  as  humour,  nor  can  I  dis- 

a  knowledge  of  liis  works  is  given  iu  the  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,'' 
vol.  ii.,  p.  10. — Ed. 

*  This  friend,  it  now  appears,  was  Dr.  King,  of  Oxford,  whose 
anecdotes  liavo  recently  been  published.  This  curious  fact  is  given  in 
a  strange  hodge-podge,  entitled  "The  Dreamer;"  a  remarkable  instancs 
wliero  a  writer  of  learning  often  conceives  that  to  be  humour,  whicli 
to  others  is  not  ovou  inlelligiblo  1 


OF   STERNE,  435 

cover  a  -word  wliicli  exactly  corresponds  with  our  term 
humour  in  any  language,  ancient  or  modern.  Cervantes 
excels  in  that  sly  satire  which  hides  itself  under  the 
cloak  of  gravity,  but  this  is  not  the  sort  of  humour  which 
so  beautifully  plays  about  the  delicacy  of  Addison's 
page;  and  both  are  distinct  from  the  broader  and 
stronger  humour  of  Sterne, 

The  result  of  Dr.  Cheyne's  honest  confession  was  expe- 
rienced by  Sterne,  for  while  more  than  half  of  the  three 
kingdoms  were  convulsed  with  laughter  at  his  humour, 
the  other  part  were  obdurately  dull  to  it.  Take,  for 
instance,  two  very  opposite  effects  produced  by 
"  Tristram  Shandy"  on  a  man  of  strong  original  humour 
himself,  and  a  wit  who  had  more  delicacy  and  sarcasm 
than  force  and  originality.  The  Rev.  Philip  Skelton 
declared  that  "  after  reading '  Tristram  Shandy,'  he  could 
not  for  two  or  three  days  attend  seriously  to  his  de- 
votion, it  filled  him  with  so  many  ludicrous  ideas,"  But 
Horace  Walpole,  who  found  his  "  Sentimental  Journey" 
very  pleasing,  declares  that  of  "  his  tiresome  '  Tristram 
Shandy,'  he  could  never  get  through  three  volumes," 

The  literary  life  of  Sterne  was  a  short  one :  it  was  a 
blaze  of  existence,  and  it  turned  his  head.  With  his 
personal  life  we  are  only  acquamted  by  tradition.  "Was 
the  great  sentimentalist  himself  unfeeling,  dissolute,  and 
utterly  depraved?  Some  anecdotes  which  one  of  his 
companions*  communicated  to  me,  confirm  Garrick's 
£iccount  preserved  in  Dr.  Burney's  collections,  that  "  He 
was  more  dissolute  in  his  cojidiict  than  his  wiitings,  and 
£;enerally  drove  every  female  away  by  his  ribaldry. 
He  degenerated  in  London  like  an  ill-transplanted 
siirub ;  the  incense  of  the  gi-eat  spoiled  his  head,  and 
their  ragouts  his  stomach.  He  grew  sickly  and  proud — 
an  invalid   in   body  and  mmd,"     Warburton    declared 

*  Caleb  Whitefoord,  the  wit  once  famed  for  his  invention  of  crosB- 
readings,  wMch  appeared  under  the  name  of  "  Papirius  Cursor." 


4:36  "LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

that  "  he  was  an  irrecoverable  scoundrel."  Authenticated 
facts  are,  however,  wanting  for  a  judicious  summary  of 
the  real  character  of  the  founder  of  sentimental  writing. 
An  impenetrable  mystery  hangs  OA^er  his  family  conduct ; 
he  has  thrown  many  sweet  domestic  touches  in  his  own 
memoirs  and  letters  addressed  to  his  daughter:  but  it 
would  seem  that  he  was  often  parted  from  his  family. 
After  he  had  earnestly  solicited  the  return  of  his  wife 
from  France,  though  she  did  return,  he  was  suffered  to 
die  in  utter  neglect. 

His  sermons  have  been  observed  to  be  characterised 
by  an  air  of  levity ;  he  attempted  this  unusual  manner.  It 
was  probably  a  caprice  which  induced  him  to  introduce 
one  of  his  sermons  in  "  Tristram  Shandy ;"  it  was  fixing 
a  diamond  in  black  velvet,  and  the  contrast  set  off  the 
brilliancy.  But  he  seems  then  to  have  had  no  design  of 
publishing  his  "  Sermons."  One  day,  in  low  spirits,  com- 
plaining to  Caleb  Whitefoord  of  the  state  of  his  finan- 
ces, Caleb  asked  him,  "  if  he  had  no  sermons  like  the  one 
in  '  Tristram  Shandy'  ?"  But  Sterne  had  no  notion  that 
"sermons"  were  saleable,  for  two  preceding  ones  had 
passed  unnoticed.  "  If  you  could  hit  on  a  striking  title, 
take  my  word  for  it  that  they  would  go  down."  The 
next  day  Sterne  made  his  appearance  in  raptures.  "I 
have  it!"  he  cried:  "Dramatic  Sermons  by  Yorick." 
With  great  difficulty  he  was  persuaded  to  drop  this 
allusion  to  the  church  and  the  playhouse  !* 

We  are  told  in  the  short  addition  to  his  own  memoirs, 
that  "he  submitted  to  fate  on  the  18th  day  of  March, 

*  He  published  these  two  vohimes  of  discourses  under  the  title  of 
"  Yorick's  Sermons,"  because,  aa  he  stated  in  his  preface,  it  would 
"  best  serve  the  booksellers'  purpose,  as  Yorick's  name  is  possibly  of 
the  two  the  more  known  ;"  but,  fearing  tlie  censure  of  the  world,  h-e 
added  a  second  title-page  with  his  own  name,  "  to  ease  the  minds  of 
those  who  see  a  jest,  and  the  danger  which  lurks  under  it,  where  no 
jest  is  meant."  All  this  did  not  free  Sterne  from  much  severe 
criticism. — Ed. 


OF   STERNE.  437 

1768,  at  his  lodgings  in  Bond-street."  But  it  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  noticed  that  Sterne  died  with  neither 
friend  nor  relation  by  his  side  !  a  hired  nurse  was  the  sole 
companion  of  the  man  whose  wit  found  admirers  in  every 
street,  but  whose  heart,  it  would  seem,  could  not  draw 
one  to  his  death-bed.  We  cannot  say  whether  Sterne, 
who  had  long  been  dying,  had  resolved  to  practise  his 
own  principle, — when  he  made  the  philosopher  Shandy, 
who  had  a  fine  saying  for  everything,  deliver  his  opinion 
on  death — that  "  there  is  no  terror,  brother  Toby,  in  its 
looks,  but  what  it  borrows  from  groans  and  convulsions 
— and  the  blo-wang  of  noses,  and  the  wiping  away  of 
tears  vrith  the  bottoms  of  curtains  in  a  dying  man's  room. 
Strip  it  of  these,  what  is  it  ?"  I  find  the  moment  of  his 
t  eath  described  in  a  singular  book,  the  "  Life  of  a  Foot- 
man." I  give  it  with  all  its  particulars.  "  In  the  month 
of  January,  1768,  we  set  oif  for  London.  We  stopped 
for  some  time  at  Almack's  house  in  Pail-Mall.  My  master 
afterwards  took  Sir  James  Gray's  house  in  Clifibrd-street, 
who  was  going  ambassador  to  Spain.  He  now  began 
house-keeping,  hired  a  French  cook,  a  house-maid,  and 
kitchen-maid,  and  kept  a  great  deal  of  the  best  company. 
About  this  time,  Mr.  Sterne,  the  celebrated  author,  was 
taken  ill  at  the  silk-bag  shop  in  Old  Bond-street.  He 
was  sometimes  called  '  Tristram  Shandy,'  and  sometimes 
'  Yorick ;'  a  very  great  favourite  of  the  gentlemen's.  One 
day  my  master  had  company  to  dinner  who  were  speaking 
?.bout  him :  the  Duke  of  Roxburgh,  the  Earl  of  March, 
the  Earl  of  Ossory,  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  Mr.  Garrick, 
Mr.  Hume,  and  Mr.  James.  '  John,'  said  my  master,  '  go 
and  inquire  how  Mr.  Sterne  is  to-day.'  I  went,  returned, 
and  said, — I  went  to  Mr.  Sterne's  lodging  ;  the  mistress 
opened  the  door;  I  inquired  how  he  did.  She  told  me 
to  go  up  to  the  nurse ;  I  went  into  the  room,  and  he  was 
just  a-dying.  I  waited  ten  minutes  ;  but  in  five  he  said, 
'  Now  it  is  come !'     He  put  up  his  hand  as  if  to  stop  a 


438  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

blow,   and  died  in  a  minute.     The  gentlemen  were  all 
very  sorry,  and  lamented  him  very  much."* 

Such  is  the  simple  narrative  of  the  death  of  this  wit  If 
Some  letters  and  papers  of  Sterne  are  now  before  me 
which  reveal  a  piece  of  secret  history  of  our  sentimentalist. 
The  letters  are  addressed  to  a  young  lady  of  the  name  of 
De  Fourmantel,  whose  ancestors  were  the  Berangers  de 
Foui-mantel,  who  during  the  persecution  of  the  French 
Protestants  by  Louis  XIV.  emigrated  to  this  country: 
they  were  entitled  to  extensive  possessions  in  St.  Domin- 
go, but  were  excluded  by  their  Protestantism,  The 
elder  sister  became  a  Catholic,  and  obtained  the  estates ; 
the  younger  adopted  the  name  of  Beranger,  and  was  a 

*  "  Travels  in  various  parts  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  during  a 
aeries  of  thirty  years  and  upwards,  by  John  Macdonald,  a  cadet  of  the 
family  of  Kippoch,  in  luvernesshire,  who  after  the  ruin  of  his  family, 
in  1765,  was  thrown,  when  a  child,  on  the  wide  world,  &c.  Printed 
for  the  author,  1790." — He  served  a  number  of  noblemen  and  gentle- 
men in  the  humble  station  of  a  footman.  There  is  such  an  air  of  truth 
and  sincerity  throughout  the  work  that  I  entertain  no  doubt  of  its 
genuineness. 

\  Sterne  was  buried  in  the  ground  belonging  to  the  parish  of  St. 
George's,  Hanover  Square,  situated  in  the  Bayswater  Road.  His 
funeral  was  "  attended  only  by  two  gentlemen  in  a  mourning  coach,  no 
bell  tolling;"  and  his  grave  has  been  described  as  "distinguished  by 
a  plain  headstone,  set  up  with  an  unsuitable  inscription,  by  a  tippling 
fraternity  of  Freemasons."  In  1761,  long  before  his  death,  was 
published  a  satire  on  the  tendencies  of  his  writings,  mixed  with  a  good 
deal  of  personal  censure,  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  "A  Funeral  Discourse, 
occasioned  by  the  much  lamented  death  of  Mr.  Yorick,  preaclied  before 
a  very  mixed  society  of  Jemmies,  Jessamies,  Methodists,  and  Christians, 
at  a  nocturnal  meeting  in  Petticoat  Lane ;  by  Christopher  Flagollan, 
A.  M."  Aa  one  of  the  minor  "Curiositiesof  Literature"  this  tract  is  worth 
noting ;  its  author,  in  a  preface,  says  that  "  it  has  boon  maliciomlij.  or 
rather  stupidly,  reported  that  the  late  Mr.  Sterne,  alias  Yorick,  is  not 
dead ;  but  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  is  writing  a  fifth  and  sixth,  and 
has  carried  his  plan  as  far  as  a  fiftieth  and  sixtieth  volume  of  the  book 
called  'The  Life  and  Opinions  of  Tristram  Shandy;'  but  they  are 
rather  to  be  attributed  to  his  ghastly  ghost,  which  is  said  to  walk  the 
purlieus  of  Coveut  Garden  and  Drury  Lane." — Ed. 


OF  STERNE.  439 

governess  to  the  Countess  of  Bristol.  The  paper  states 
that  Catherine  de  Fourmantel  formed  an  attachment  to 
Sterne,  and  that  it  was  the  expectation  of  their  friends 
that  they  would  be  united;  but  that  on  a  visit  Sterne 
became  acquainted  with  a  lady,  whom  he  married  in  the 
space  of  one  month,  after  having  paid  his  addresses  to 
Miss  de  Fourmantel  for  live  years.  Tlie  consequence 
was,  the  total  derangement  of  intellect  of  this  young 
lady.  She  was  confined  in  a  private  madhouse.  Sterne 
twice  saw  her  there ;  and  from  observation  on  her  state 
drew  the  "  Maria"  whom  he  has  so  pathetically  described. 
Tlie  elder  sister,  at  the  instigation  of  the  father  of  the 
communicator  of  these  letters,  came  to  England,  and 
took  charge  of  the  unhappy  Maria,  who  died  at  Paris. 
"  For  many  years,"  says  the  writer  of  this  statement, 
"  my  mother  had  the  handkerchief  Sterne  alludes  to." 
The  anxious  Tvash  of  Sterne  was  to  have  his  letters 
returned  to  him.  In  this  he  failed;  and  such  as  they 
are,  without  date,  either  of  time  or  place,  they  are  now 
before  me. 

The  billets-doux  are  unquestionably  authentic,  but  the 
statement  is  inaccurate.  I  doubt  whether  the  narrative 
be  correct  instating  that  Sterne  married  after  an  acquaint- 
ance of  one  month ;  for  he  tells  us  in  his  Memoirs  that 
he  courted  his  wife  for  two  years  ;  he,  however,  married 
in  1741.  The  "  Sei-mon  of  Elijah,"  which  he  presents  to 
Miss  de  Fourmantel  in  one  of  these  letters,  was  not  pub- 
lished till  1747.  Her  disordered  mind  could  not  therefore 
have  been  occasioned  by  the  sudden  marriage  of  Sterne. 
A  sentimental  intercourse  evidently  existed  between 
them.  He  perhaps  sought  in  her  sympathy,  consolation 
for  his  domestic  infelicity  ;  he  communicates  to  her  the 
minutest  events  of  his  early  fame ;  and  these  letters, 
which  certainly  seem  very  like  love-letters,  present  a  pic- 
ture of  his  life  in  town  in  the  full  flower  of  his  fame  eager 
with  hope  and  flushed  with  success. 


440  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

LETTER  I. 

"  My  dear  Kitty, — I  beg  you  will  accept  of  tlie  in- 
closed sermon,  which  I  do  not  make  you  a  present  of 
merely  because  it  was  wrote  by  myself,  but  because  there 
is  a  beautiful  character  in  it  of  a  tender  and  compassionate 
mind  in  the  picture  given  of  Elijah.  Read  it,  my  dear 
Kitty,  and  believe  me  when  I  assure  you  that  I  see  some- 
thing of  the  same  kind  and  gentle  disposition  in  your 
heart  which  I  have  painted  in  the  prophet's,  which  has 
attached  me  so  much  to  you  and  your  interest,  that  I 
shall  live  and  die 

"  Your  affectionate  and  faithful  servant, 

"Laurence  Sterne. 

"  P.  S. — If  possible,  I  will  see  you  this  afternoon  be- 
fore I  go  to  Mr.  Fothergil's.  Adieu,  dear  friend, — I  had 
the  pleasure  to  drink  your  health  last  night." 

letter  n. 

"  My  dear  Kitty, — If  this  billet  catches  you  in  bed, 
you  are  a  lazy,  sleepy  little  slut,  and  I  am  a  giddy,  fool- 
ish, unthinking  fellow,  for  keeping  you  so  late  up — but 
this  Sabbath  is  a  day  of  rest,  at  the  same  time  that  it  is 
a  day  of  sorrow ;  for  I  shall  not  see  my  dear  creature  to- 
day, unless  you  meet  me  at  Taylor's  half  an  hour  after 
twelve;  but  in  this  do  as  you  like.  I  have  ordered  Mat- 
thew to  turn  thief,  and  steal  you  a  quart  of  honey ;  what 
is  honey  to  the  sweetness  of  thee,  who  art  sweeter  than 
all  the  flowers  it  comes  from  !  I  love  you  to  distraction, 
Kitty,  and  will  love  you  on  so  to  eternity — so  adieu,  and 
believe,  what  time  will  only  prove  me,  that  I  am, 

"  Yours." 

letter  III. 

"My  dear  KiTi'Y, — I  have  sent  you  a  pot  of  sweet- 
meats and  a  pot  of  honey — neither  of  them  half  so  sweet 


OF   STERNE.  4J,1 

as  yourself — but  don't  be  vain  upon  this,  or  presume  to 
grow  sour  upon  this  character  of  sweetness  I  give  you; 
for  if  you  do  I  shall  send  you  a  pot  of  pickles  (by  the 
way  of  contraries)  to  sweeten  you  up,  and  bring  you  to 
yourself  again — whatever  changes  happen  to  you,  believe 
me  that  I  am  unalterably  yours,  and  according  to  your 
-  ctto,  such  a  one,  my  dear  Kitty, 

"  Qui  ne  changera  pas  qu'en  mourant. 

"  L.  S." 

He  came  up  to  town  in  1760,  to  publish  the  two  first 
volumes  of  "  Shandy,"  of  which  the  first  edition  had 
appeared  at  York  the  preceding  year. 

LETTER  IV. 

"  London,  May  8. 

"  My  dear  Kitty, — I  have  arrived  here  safe  and  sound 
— except  for  the  hole  in  my  heart  which  you  have  made, 
like  a  dear  enchanting  slut  as  you  are, — I  shall  take 
lodgings  this  morning  in  Piccadilly  or  the  Haymarket, 
and  before  I  send  this  letter  will  let  you  know  where  to 
direct  a  letter  to  me,  wliich  letter  I  shall  wait  for  by  the 
return  of  the  post  with  great  impatience. 

"  I  have  the  greatest  honours  paid  me,  and  most  civil- 
iti . :  shown  me  that  were  ever  known  from  the  great ; 
and  am  engaged  already  to  ten  noblemen  and  men  of 
fashion  to  dine,  Mr.  Garrick  pays  me  all  and  more  hon- 
our than  I  could  look  for :  I  dined  with  him  to-day,  and 
he  has  prompted  numbers  of  great  people  to  carry  me  to 
dine  with  them — he  has  given  me  an  order  for  the  liberty 
of  his  boxes,  and  of  every  part  of  his  house,  for  the  whole 
season ;  and  indeed  leaves  nothing  undone  that  can  do 
me  either  service  or  credit.  He  has  undertaken  the 
whole  management  of  the  booksellers,  and  will  procure 
me  a  great  price — but  more  of  this  in  my  next, 

"  And  now,  my  dear  girl,  let  me  assure  you  of  the 
truest  friendship  for  you  that  ever  man  bore  towards  a 


442  LITERARY   CHARACTER 

woman — wherever  I  am,  my  heart  is  warm  towards  yo'j, 
and  ever  shall  be,  till  it  is  cold  forever.  I  thank  you  for 
the  kind  proof  you  gave  me  of  your  desire  to  make  my 
heart  easy  in  ordering  yourself  to  be  denied  to  you  know 
who — while  I  am  so  miserable  to  be  separated  frotx  my 
dear,  dear  Kitty,  it  would  have  stabbed  my  soul  to  have 
thought  such  a  fellow  could  have  the  liberty  of  coming 
near  you. — I  therefore  take  this  proof  of  your  love  and 
good  principles  most  kindly — and  have  as  much  faith 
and  dependence  upon  you  in  it,  as  if  I  was  at  your  elbow 
— would  to  God  I  was  at  this  moment — for  I  am  sitting 
solitary  and  alone  in  my  bedchamber  (ten  o'clock  at 
night  after  the  play),  and  would  give  a  guinea  for  a 
squeeze  of  your  hand.  I  send  my  soul  perpetually  oiit  to 
see  what  you  are  a-doing — wish  I  could  convey  my  body 
with  it — adieu,  dear  and  kind  girl.  Ever  your  kind  friend 
and  affectionate  admirer. 

"  I  go  to  the  oratorio  this  night.  My  service  to  your 
mamma." 

LETTER  V. 

"  My  dear  Kitty, — Though  I  have  but  a  moment's 
time  to  spare,  I  would  not  omit  writing  you  an  account 
of  my  good  fortune ;  my  Lord  Fauconberg  has  this  day 
given  me  a  hundred  and  sixty  pounds  a  year,  which  I 
hold  with  all  my  preferment;  so  that  all  or  the  most 
part  of  my  sorrows  and  tears  are  going  to  be  wiped 
away. — I  have  but  one  obstacle  to  my  happiness  now 
left — and  what  that  is  you  know  as  well  as  I.* 

"  I  long  most  impatiently  to  sec  my  dear  Kitty.  I 
had  a  purse  of  guineas  given  me  yest^erday  by  a  bishop — 
all  will  do  well  in  time. 

"  From  morning  to  night  my  lodgings,  which  by  the 

*  Can  this  allude  to  the  death  of  his  wife  ?-that  very  year  ho  tells 
his  daughter  ho  had  taken  a  house  at  York,  "for  your  mother  aDtl 
yourself." 


HUME,   ROBERTSON,    AND   BIRCH.  44.3 

bye  are  the  genteelest  in  town,*  are  full  of  the  greatest 
company. — I  dined  these  two  days  with  two  ladies  of 
the  bedcliamber — then  with  Lord  Rockingham,  Lord 
Edgcu7nb,  Lord  Winchelsea,  Lord  Littleton,  a  bishop, 
♦fee,  &c. 

"  I  assm-e  you,  my  dear  Kitty,  that  Tristram  is  the 
fashion. — Pi  ay  to  God  I  may  see  my  dearest  girl  soon 
and  well. — Adieu. 

"  Your  affectionate  fi'iend, 
"L.  Stekne." 


HUME,  ROBERTSON,  AND   BIRCH. 

The  rarest  of  literary  characters  is  such  an  historian 
as  Gibbon  ;  but  we  know  the  price  which  he  paid  for  his 
acquisitions — unbroken  and  undeviating  studies.  Wilkes, 
a  mere  wit,  could  only  discover  the  drudgery  of  com- 
pilation in  the  profound  philosopher  and  painter  of  men 
and  of  nations.  A  speculative  turn  of  mind,  delighting 
in  generalising  principles  and  aggregate  views,  is  usually 
deficient  in  that  closer  knowledge,  without  which  every 
step  we  take  is  on  the  fairy-ground  of  conjecture  and 
theory,  very  apt  to  shift  its  unsubstantial  scenes.  The 
researchers  are  like  the  mhabitants  of  a  city  who  live 
among  its  ancient  edifices,  and  are  in  the  market-places 
and  the  streets :  but  the  theorists,  occupied  by  perspec- 
tive views,  with  a  more  artist-like  pencil  may  impose  on 
us  a  general  resemblance  of  things ;  'but  often  shall  we 
find  in  those  shadowy  outlines  how  the  real  objects  are 
nearly,  if  not  wholly  lost — for  much  is  given  which  is 
fanciful,  and  much  omitted  which  is  time. 

Of  our  two  popular  histoi'ians,  Hume  and  Robertson, 
alike  in  character  but  different  in  genius,  it  is  much  to  be 
iamentetl  that   neither   came   to   their   tasks   with    the 

*  They  were  tbe  second  house  from  St.  Alban's  Street,  Pall  MalL 


4:44  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

previous  studies  of  half  a  life;  and  their  spe3ulative  or 
theoretical  histories  are  of  so  much  the  less  value  when- 
ever they  are  deficient  in  that  closer  resear-^h  which  can 
be  obtained  only  in  one  way ;  not  the  most  agreeable  to 
those  literary  adventurers,  for  such  they  are,  however 
high  they  rank  in  the  class  of  genius,  who  grasp  at  early 
celebrity,  and  dejjend  more  on  themselves  than  on  their 
researches. 

In  some  curious  letters  to  the  literary  antiquary  Dr. 
Birch,  Robertson  acknowledges  "  my  chief  object  is  to 
adorn^  as  far  as  I  am  capable  of  adorning,  the  history  of 
a  period  which  deserves  to  be  better  known."  He  prob- 
ably took  his  lesson  from  Voltaire,  the  reigning  author 
of  that  day,  and  a  great  favourite  with  Robertson.  Vol- 
taire indeed  tell  us,  that  no  writers,  but  those  who  have 
composed  tragedies,  can  throw  any  interest  into  a  his- 
tory; that  we  must  know  to  paint  and  excite  the 
passions ;  and  that  a  history,  like  a  dramatic  piece,  must 
have  situation,  intrigue,  and  catastrophe ;  an  observation 
svhich,  however  true,  at  least  shows  that  there  can  be  but 
a  moderate  quantity  of  truth  in  such  agreeable  narratives. 
Robertson's  notion  of  adorning  history  was  the  pleasing 
labour  of  genius — it  was  to  amplify  into  vastness,  to 
^olour  into  beauty,  and  to  arrange  the  objects  of  his  med- 
itation with  a  secret  artifice  of  disposition.  Such  an 
historian  is  a  sculptor,  who,  though  he  display  a  correct 
semblance  of  nature,  is  not  less  solicitous  to  display 
the  rniracles  of  his  art,  and  enlarges  his  figures  to  a  co- 
lossal dimension.     Such  is  theoretical  history. 

The  theoretical  historian  communicatees  his  own  char- 
acter to  his  history ;  and  if,  like  Robertson,  he  be  pro- 
found and  politic,  he  detects  the  secret  motives  of  his 
actors,  unravels  the  webs  of  cabinet  councils,  explains 
projects  that  were  unknown,  and  details  stratagems 
which  never  took  place.  When  we  admire  the  fertile 
conceptions  of  the  Queen  Regent,  of  Elizab*  th,  and  oC 


HUME,   EOBERTSON,    AND   BIRCH.  445 

Bothwell,  we  are  often  defrauding  Robertson  of  whatever 
admiration  may  be  due  to  such  deep  policy. 

When  Hume  received  from  Dr.  Birch  Forbes's  Manu- 
bcripts  and  Murdin's  State-papers,  in  great  haste  he  writes 
to  his  brc  thei  historian : — "  What  I  wrote  you  with  regard 
to  Mary,  &c ,  was  from  the  printed  histories  and  papers. 
But  I  am  now  sorry  to  tell  you  that  by  Murdin's  State- 
papers,  the  matter  is  put  beyond  all  question.  I  got 
these  papers  during  the  holidays  by  Dr.  Bii-ch's  means ; 
and  as  soon  as  I  read  them  I  ran  to  Millar^  and  desired 
him  very  earnestly  to  stop  the  publication  of  yoiu-  his- 
tory till  I  should  write  to  you,  and  give  you  an  oppor- 
tunity of  con-ecting  a  mistake  so  important ;  but  he 
absolutely  refused  compliance.  He  said  that  your  book 
was  now  finished;  that  the  whole  narrative  of  Mary's 
trial  must  be  wrote  over  again ;  that  it  was  uncertain 
whether  the  new  narrative  could  be  broi;ght  within  the 
same  compass  with  the  old :  that  this  change  would  re- 
quire the  cancelling  a  great  many  sheets  ;  that  there  were 
scattered  j^assa^/es  through  the  voluines  founded  on  your 
theory P  What  an  interview  was  this  of  Andrew  Millar 
and  David  Hume !  truly  the  bibliopole  shone  to  greater 
advantage  than  the  tioo  theoretical  historians  !  And  so 
the  world  had,  and  eagerly  received,  what  this  critical 
bookseller  declared  "  required  the  new  printing  (that  is, 
the  new  writing)  of  a  great  part  of  the  edition  !" 

When  this  successful  history  of  Scotland  invited  Rob- 
ei-tson  to  pursue  this  newly-discovered  province  of  philo- 
sophical or  theoretical  history,  he  was  long  irresolute  in 
his  designs,  and  so  unpractised  in  those  researches  he 
was  desu'ous  of  attempting,  that  his  admirers  would  have 
lost  his  popular  productions,  had  not  a  fortunate  intro- 
duction to  Dr.  Birch,  whose  life  had  been  spent  in  histori- 
cal pursuits,  enabled  the  Scottish  historian  to  open  many 
a  clasped  book,  and  to  drink  of  many  a  sealed  fountain. 
Robertson  was  long  undecided  whether  to  write  the  his- 


446  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

tory  of  Greece,  of  Leo  X.,  that  of  William  III.  and  Queen 
Anne,  or  that  of  Charles  V.,  and  perhaps  many  other 
subjects. 

We  have  a  curious  letter  of  Lord  Orford's,  detailing 
the  purport  of  a  visit  Robertson  paid  to  him  to  inquire 
after  materials  for  the  reigns  of  William  and  Anne ;  he 
seemed  to  have  little  other  knowledge  than  what  he  had 
taken  upon  trust.  "  I  painted  to  him,"  says  Lord  Or- 
ford,  "  the  difficulties  and  the  want  of  materials — but  the 
booksellers  will  out-argue  me,"  Both  the  historian  and 
"  the  booksellers"  had  resolved  on  another  history  :  and 
Robertson  looked  upon  it  as  a  task  which  he  wished  to 
have  set  to  him,  and  not  a  glorious  toil  long  matured  in 
his  mind.  But  how  did  he  come  prepared  to  the  very 
dissimilar  subjects  he  proposed?  Wlien  he  resolved  to 
write  the  history  of  Charles  V.,  he  confesses  to  J3r.  Birch : 
"  I  never  had  access  to  any  copious  libraries,  and  do  not 
pretend  to  any  extensive  Tcnoioledge  of  authors  /  but  I 
have  made  a  list  of  siich  as  I  thought  most  essential  to  the 
subject,  and  have  put  them  down  as  I  found  them  men- 
tioned  in  any  booh  I  happened  to  read.  Your  erudition 
and  knowledge  of  books  is  infinitely  superior  to  mine, 
and  I  doubt  not  but  you  will  be  able  to  mak-e  such  addi- 
tions to  my  catalogue  as  may  be  of  great  use  to  me.  I 
know  very  well,  and  to  my  sorrow,  how  servilely  histo- 
rians copy  from  one  another,  and  how  little  is  to  be  learned 
from  reading  many  books ;  but  at  the  same  time,  when 
one  writes  upon  any  particular  period,  it  is  both  necessary 
and  decent  for  hira  to  consult  every  book  relating  to  it 
upon  which  he  can  lay  his  hands."  This  avowal  jji'oves 
that  Robertson  knew  little  of  the  history  of  Charles  V. 
till  he  began  the  task  ;  and  he  further  confesses  that  "  he 
had  no  knowledge  of  the  Spanish  or  German,"  which,  for 
the  history  of  a  Spanish  monarch  and  a  German  emperor, 
was  somewhat  ominous  of  the  nature  of  the  projected 
history. 


t 


HUME,    ROBERTSON,   J^D  BIRCH.  447 

Yet  Robertson,  though  he  once  thus  acknowledged,  as 
we  se  i^  that  he  "  never  had  access  to  any  copious  libra- 
ries, and  did  not  pretend  to  any  extensive  knoicledge  of 
authors,''^  seems  to  have  acquired  from  his  friend,  Dr. 
Birch,  who  was  a  genuine  researcher  in  manuscripts  as 
well  as  printed  books,  a  taste  even  for  bibliographical 
ostentation,  as  appears  by  that  pompous  and  voluminous 
list  of  authors  prefixed  to  his  "  History  of  America ;"  the 
most  objectionable  of  his  histories,  being  a  perpetual 
apology  for  the  Spanish  Government,  adapted  to  the 
meridian  of  the  court  of  Madrid,  rather  than  to  the 
cause  of  humanity,  of  truth,  and  of  philosophy.  I  under- 
stand; from  good  authority,  that  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  prove  that  our  historian  had  barely  examined  them, 
and  probably  had  never  turned  over  half  of  that  decep- 
tive catalogue.  Birch  thought  so,  and  was  probably  a 
little  disturbed  at  the  overwhelming  success  of  our  elo- 
qiient  and  penetrating  historian,  while  his  own  historical 
labours,  the  most  authentic  materials  of  history,  but  not 
fiistory  itself,  hardly  repaid  the  printer.  Birch's  publica- 
tions are  either  originals,  that  is,  letters  or  state-papers ; 
or  they  are  nari-atives  drawn  from  originals,  for  he  never 
wrote  but  from  manuscripts.  They  are  the  true  materia 
historica. 

Birch,  however,  must  have  enjoyed  many  a  secret  tri- 
Tinph  over  our  popular  historians,  who  had  introduced 
*heir  beautiful  philosophical  history  into  our  literature ; 
Ihe  dilemma  in  which  they  sometimes  found  themselves 
must  have  amused  him.  He  has  thrown  out  an  oblique 
stroke  at  Robertson's  "  pomp  of  style,  and  fine  eloquence," 
"  which  too  often  tend  to  disguise  the  real  state  of  the 
facts."*  When  he  received  from  Robertson  the  j^resent 
of  his  "  Charles  Y.,"  after  the  just  tribute  of  his  praise, 
he  adds  some  regret  that  the  historian  had  not  been  so 
fortunate  as  to  have  seen  Burghley's  State-papers,  "  pub- 
♦  Sec-  "Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  387. 


448  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

lished  since  Christmas,"  and  a  manuscript  trial  of  Mary, 
Queen  of  Scots,  in  Lord  Royston's  possession.  A.las ! 
such  is  the  fate  of  speculative  history  /  a  Christmas  may 
come,  and  overturn  the  elaborate  castle  in  the  air.  Can 
we  forbear  a  smile  when  we  hear  Robertson,  who  had 
projected  a  history  of  British  America,  of  which  we  pos- 
sess two  chapters,  when  the  rebellion  and  revolution 
broke  out,  congratulate  himself  that  he  had  not  made 
any  further  progress  ?  "  It  is  lucky  that  my  American 
History  was  not  finished  before  this  event ;  how  many 
plausible  theories  that  I  should  have  been  entitled  to 
form  are  contradicted  by  what  has  now  happened !"  A 
fair  confession ! 

Let  it  not  be  for  one  moment  imagined  that  this 
article  is  designed  to  depreciate  the  genius  of  Hume  and 
Robertson,  who  are  the  noblest  of  our  modern  authors, 
and  exhibit  a  perfect  idea  of  the  literary  character. 

Forty-four  years  ago,  I  transcribed  from  their  originals 
the  correspondence  of  the  historian  with  the  literary  anti- 
quary. For  the  satisfaction  of  the  reader,  I  here  preserve 
these  literary  relics. 

Letters  hetween  Dr.  Birch  and  Dr.  W.  Bohertson^  relative 
to  the  Histories  of  Scotland  and  of  Charles  VI 

"t«  db.  birch. 

"Gladsmuir,  19  Sept.  1151. 

"Reverend  Sir, — ^Though  I  have  not  the  good  for- 
tune to  be  known  to  you  personally,  I  am  so  happy  as  to 
be  no  stranger  to  your  writings,  to  which  I  have  been  in- 
debted for  much  useful  instruction.  And  as  I  have  heard 
from  my  friends.  Sir  David  Dalrymple  and  Mr.  Davidson, 
that  your  disposition  to  oblige  was  equal  to  your  knowl- 
edge, I  now  presume  to  write  to  you  and  to  ask  your  as- 
BiBtancc  without  any  apology. 

"  I  have  been  engaged  for  some  time  in  writing  the 


HUME,   ROBERTSON,   AND  BiKCJii  449 

history  of  Scotland  from  the  death  of  James  V.  to  the 
accession  of  James  YI.  to  the  throne  of  England.  My 
chief  object  is  to  adorn  (as  far  as  I  am  capable  of  adorn- 
ing) the  history  of  a  period  which,  on  account  of  the 
greatness  of  the  events,  and  their  close  connection  with 
the  transactions  in  England,  deserves  to  be  better  known. 
But  as  elegance  of  composition,  even  where  a  writer  can 
attain  that,  is  but  a  trivial  merit  without  historical  truth 
and  accuracy,  and  as  the  prejudices  and  rage  of  factions, 
both  religious  and  political,  have  rendered  almost  every 
fact,  in  the  period  which  I  have  chosen,  a  matter  of 
doubt  or  of  controversy,  I  have  therefore  taken  all  the 
pains  in  my  power  to  examine  the  evidence  on  both 
sides  with  exactness.  You  know  how  copious  the  mate- 
ria Idstorica  in  this  period  is.  Besides  all  the  common 
historians  and  printed  collections  of  papers,  I  have  con- 
sulted several  manuscripts  which  are  to  be  found  in  this 
country.  I  am  persuaded  that  there  are  still  many  manu- 
scripts worth  my  seeing  to  be  met  with  in  England,  and 
for  that  reason  I  propose  to  pass  some  time  in  London 
this  winter.  I  am  impatient,  however,  to  know  what 
discoveries  of  this  kind  I  may  expect,  and  what  are  the 
treasures  before  me,  and  with  regard  to  this  I  beg  leave 
to  consult  you. 

"  I  was  afraid  for  some  time  that  Dr.  Forbes's  Collec- 
tions had  been  lost  ujjon  his  death,  but  I  am  glad  to  find 
by  your  '  Memoirs '  that  they  are  in  the  possession  of  Mr. 
Yorkr.  I  see  likewise  that  the '  DepSches  de  Beaumont ' 
av(i  in  the  hands  of  the  same  gentleman.  But  I  have  no 
opportunity  of  consulting  your  'Memoirs'  at  present, 
and  I  cannot  remember  whether  the  'Depeches  de  Fene- 
lon '  be  still  preserved  or  not.  I  see  that  Carte  has  made 
a  great  use  of  them  in  a  very  busy  period  from  1563  to 
1576.  I  know  the  strength  of  Carte's  prejudices  so  well, 
that  I  dare  say  many  things  may  be  found  there  that  he 
could  not  see,  or  would  not  publish.     May  I  beg  the 

29 


450  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

favour  of  you  to  let  me  know  whether  Fenelon's  papers 
be  yet  extant  and  accessible,  and  to  give  me  some  gen- 
eral idea  of  what  Dr.  Forbes's  Collections  contain  with 
regard  to  Scotland,  and  whether  the  papers  they  consist 
of  are  diiferent  from  those  published  by  Haynes,  Ander- 
son, &c.  I  am  far  from  desiring  that  you  should  enter 
into  any  detail  that  would  be  troublesome  to  you,  but 
some  short  hint  of  the  nature  of  these  Collections  would 
be  extremely  satisfying  to  my  curiosity,  and  I  shall  es- 
teem it  a  great  obligation  laid  upon  me. 

*'  I  have  brought  my  woi-k  almost  to  a  conclusion.     If 

you  would  be  so  good  as  to  suggest  anything  that  you 

thought  useful  for  me  to  know  or  to  examine  into,  I  shall 

receive  your  directions  with  great  respect  and  gratitude. 

"  I  am,  with  sincere  esteem, 

"  Rev-^  Sir,  Y'  m.  ob.  &  m.  h.  S^ 

"  Wm.  Robertson." 

to  dr.  birch. 

"  Edinburgh,  1  Jan.  1759. 

"  Dear  Sir, — If  I  liad  not  considered  a  letter  of  mere 
compliment  as  an  impertinent  interruption  to  one  who  is 
so  busy  as  you  commonly  are,  I  would  long  before  this 
have  made  my  acknowledgments  to  you  for  the  civilities 
which  you  was  so  good  as  to  show  me  while  I  was  in 
London.  I  had  not  only  a  proof  of  your  obliging  dis- 
position, but  I  reaped  the  good  effects  of  it. 

"  The  papers  to  which  I  got  access  by  your  mean?, 
especially  those  from  Lord  Royston,  have  rendered  my 
work  more  perfect  than  it  could  have  otherwise  beoD. 
My  history  is  now  ready  for  publication,  and  I  have  de- 
sired Mr,  Millar  to  send  you  a  large  paper  copy  of  it  in 
my  iiame,  which  I  beg  you  may  accept  as  a  testimony  of 
my  regard  and  of  my  gratitude.     Tie  will  likewise  trans- 


1 


HUME,   ROBERTSON,    AND   BIRCR  451 

niit  to  you  another  copy,  whicli  I  must  entreat  you  to 
present  to  my  Lord  Royston,  with  such  acknowledg- 
ments of  his  favours  toward  me  as  are  proper  for  me  to 
xnake.  I  have  printed  a  short  appendix  of  original 
papers.  You  will  observe  that  there  are  several  inaccu- 
racies in  the  press  work.  Mr.  Millar  grew  impatient  to 
have  the  book  published,  so  that  it  was  impossible  to 
send  down  the  proofs  to  me.  I  hope,  however,  the 
papers  will  be  abundantly  intelligible.  I  published 
them  orly  to  confirm  my  own  system,  about  particular 
facts,  not  to  obtain  the  character  of  an  antiquarian.  If, 
upon  perusing  the  book,  you  discover  any  inaccuracies, 
either  with  regard  to  style  or  facts,  whether  of  great  or 
of  small  importance,  I  will  esteem  it  a  very  great  favour 
if  you'll  be  so  good  as  to  communicate  them  to  me.  I 
shall  likewise  be  indebted  to  you,  if  you'll  let  me  know 
what  reception  the  book  meets  with  among  the  literati 
of  your  acquaintance,  I  hope  you  will  be  particularly 
pleased  with  the  critical  dissertation  at  the  end,  which  is 
the  production  of  a  co-partnership  between  me  and  your 
friend  Mr.  Davidson,  Both  Sir  D.  Dalrymple  and  he 
offer  comjiliments  to  you.  If  Dean  Tucker  be  in  town 
this  winter,  I  beg  you  will  offer  my  compliments  to  him. 
"  I  am,  w.  great  regard,  D^  Sir, 

"  Y'  m.  obed'.  &  mst.  o.  ser'., 

"  "William  Robertson. 
"  ]VI,y  address  is,  one  of  the  ministers  of  Ed." 

TO    DR.    BIRCH. 

"Edinburgh,  13  Bee.  1759. 
"  Dear  Sir, — I  beg  leave  once  more  to  have  recourse 
to  your  good  nature  and  to  your  love  of  literature,  and 
to  presume  upon  patting  you  to  a  piece  of  trouble. 
After  considering  several  subjects  for  another  history,  I 
have  at  last  fixed  upon  the  reign  of  Charles  V.,  which 


452  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

contains  the  first  establishment  of  the  present  political 
system  of  Europe.  I  have  begun  to  labour  seriously 
upon  my  task.  One  of  the  first  things  requisite  was  to 
form  a  catalogue  of  books  which  must  be  consulted.  A« 
I  never  had  access  to  very  copious  libraries,  I  do  not 
pretend  to  any  extensive  knowledge  of  ^.uthors,  but  I 
have  made  a  list  of  such  as  I  tho  ght  most  essential  to 
the  subject,  and  have  put  them  down  jast  in  the  order 
which  they  occurred  to  me,  or  as  I  found  them  mentioned 
in  any  book  I  happened  to  read.  I  beg  you  would  be 
so  good  as  to  look  it  over,  and  as  your  erudition  and 
knowledge  of  books  is  infinitely  superior  to  mine,  I 
doubt  not  but  you'll  be  able  to  make  such  additions  to 
my  catalogue  as  may  be  of  great  use  to  me.  I  know 
very  well,  and  to  my  sorrow,  how  servilely  historians 
copy  from  one  another,  and  how  little  is  to  be  learned 
from  reading  many  books,  but  at  the  sxirae  time  when 
one  writes  upon  any  particular  period,  it  is  both  necessary 
and  decent  for  him  to  consiilt  every  boock  relating  to  it, 
upon  which  he  can  lay  his  hands.  I  am  sufiiciently 
master  of  French  and  Italian ;  but  have  no  knowledge 
of  the  Spanish  or  German  tongues.  I  flatter  myself 
that  I  shall  not  sufler  much  by  this,  as  the  two  former 
languages,  together  with  the  Latin,  will  supply  me  with 
books  in  abundance.  Mr.  Walpole  informed  me  some 
time  ago,  that  in  the  catalogue  of  Harleian  MSS.  in  the 
British  Museum,  there  is  a  volume  of  papers  relating  to 
Charles  V.,  it  is  No.  295.  I  do  not  expect  much  from  it, 
but  it  would  be  extremely  obliging  if  you  would  take  the 
trouble  of  looking  into  it  and  of  informing  me  in  gen- 
eral what  it  contains.  In  the  catalogue  I  have  inclosed, 
this  mark  X  is  prefixed  to  all  the  books  which  I  can  get 
in  tJiis  country  ;  if  you  ymirself,  or  any  friend  \Vith  whom 
you  oan  use  freedom,  have  any  of  the  other  books  in  my 
list,  and  will  be  so  good  as  to  send  them  to  Mr.  Millar, 
ho  will  forward  them  to  me,  and  I  shall  receive  them 


HUME,    ROBERTSON,    AND   BIRCH.  453 

with  great  gratitude  and  return  them  with  much  punctu- 
ality. I  beg  leave  to  offer  compliments  to  all  our  com- 
mon friends,  and  particularly  to  Dean  Tucker,  if  he  be 
in  town  this  season,  I  ^dsh  it  were  in  my  power  to 
confer  any  return  for  all  the  trouble  you  have  taken  in 
my  behalf " 

FKOM   DR.    BIRCH   TO   THE   REV.    DR.    ROBERTSON   AT 
EDINBURGH. 

^^  London,  3  Jany.  1760. 

"Dear  Sir, — Your  letter  of  the  13  Dec',  was  particu- 
larly agreeable  to  me,  as  it  acquainted  me  with  your 
resolution  to  resume  your  historic  pen,  and  to  undertake 
a  subject  which,  from  its  importance  and  extent,  and 
your  manner  of  treating  it,  will  be  highly  acceptable  to 
the  public. 

"  I  have  perused  your  list  of  books  to  be  consulted  on 
this  occasion ;  and  after  transcribing  it  have  delivered  it 
to  Mr,  Millar  ;  and  shall  now  make  some  additions  to  it. 

"  The  new  '  Histoire  d'Allemagne '  by  Father  Barre, 
chancellor  of  the  Univei'sity  of  Paris,  published  a  few 
years  ago  in  several  volumes  in  q".,  is  a  work  of  very 
good  ci-edit,  and  to  be  perused  by  you  ;  as  is  likeTvise 
the  second  edition  of  'Abrege  chronologique  de  I'His- 
toire  &  du  Droit  public  d'Allemagne,'  just  printed  at 
Paris,  and  formed  upon  the  plan  of  President  Henault's 
'  "NTouvel  Abreg6  chronologique  de  I'Histoire  de  France,' 
in  Avhich  the  reigns  of  Francis  I.  and  Henry  II.  will  be 
proper  to  be  seen  by  you. 

"  The  '  Memoires  pour  servir  a  I'Histoire  du  Cardinal 
Granvelle,'  by  Father  Rosper  Levesque,  a  Benedictin 
monk,  which  were  printed  at  Paris  in  two  vol'.  12°.  in 
1753,  contain  some  particulars  relating  to  Charles  Y. 
But  this  performance  is  much  less  curious  than  it  might 
have  been,  considering  that  the  author  had  the  advantage 


454  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

of  a  vast  collection,  above  an  hundred  volumes  of  the 
Cardinal's  original  papers,  at  Besan9on.     Among  these 
are  the  papers  of  his  eminence's  father,  who  was  chan 
cellor  and  minister  to  the  Emperor  Charles  V. 

"  Bishop  Burnet,  in  the  '  Summary  of  Affairs  before 
the  Restoration,'  prefixed  to  his  '  History  of  his  Own 
Time,'  mentions  a  life  of  Frederick  Elector  Palatine,  who 
first  reformed  the  Palatinate,  as  curiously  written  by 
Hubert  Thomas  Leodius.  This  book,  though  a  very  rare 
one,  is  in  my  study  and  shall  be  sent  to  you.  You  will 
find  in  it  many  facts  relating  to  your  Emperor.  The 
manuscript  was  luckily  saved  when  the  libi-ary  of  Hey- 
delberg  was  plundered  and  conveyed  to  the  Vatican 
after  the  taking  of  that  city  in  1622,  and  it  was  printed 
in  1624,  at  Francfort,  in  4*°.  The  writer  had  been  secre- 
tary and  councillor  to  the  elector. 

"  Another  book  which  I  shall  transmit  to  you  is  a 
valuable  collection  of  state  papers,  made  by  Mons'. 
Rivier,  and  printed  at  Blois,  in  1665,  in  two  vols.  f". 
They  relate  to  the  reigns  of  Francis  I.,  Henry  II.,  and 
Francis  IL  of  France.  The  indexes  Avill  direct  you  to 
Buch  passages  as  concern  the  Empei'or. 

"  As  Mons'.  Amelot  de  la  Houssaie,  who  was  extremely 
conversant  in  modern  history,  has,  in  the  1^'.  tome  of  his 
'  Memoii-es  Historiques  Politiques  et  Litteraires,'  from  p. 
156  to  193,  treated  of  Charles  V.,  I  shall  add  that  bcoK 
to  my  parcel. 

"  Vai-illas's  '  Life  of  Henry  II.  of  France '  should  be 
looked  into,  though  that  historian  has  not  at  present 
much  reputation  for  exactness  and  veracity. 

"Dr.  Fiddes,  in  his  'Life  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,'  has 
frequent  occasion  to  introduce  the  Emperor,  his  ccntein- 
porary,  of  which  Bayle  in  his  Dictionary  gives  us  an 
express  article  and  not  a  short  one,  for  it  consists  of  eight 
of  his  pages. 

"Roger  Ascham,  Queen   Elizabeth's  preceptor,  whtm 


HUME,    ROBERTSON,    AND   BIRCH.  455 

he  was  secretary  to  S'.  Richard  Morysin  amb.  from  K. 
Edwai'd  YI.  to  the  imperial  court,  wrote  to  a  fiiend  of 
his  '  a  report  and  discourse  of  the  affairs  and  state  of 
Germany  and  the  Emperor  Charles's  court.  This  was 
printed  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth ;  but  the  copies 
of  that  editicn  are  now  very  rare.  However  this  will 
be  soon  made  public,  being  reprinted  in  an  edition  of  all 
the  author's  English  works  now  in  the  press. 

"  The  '  Epitres  des  Princes,'  translated  from  the  Italian 
by  Belleforest,  will  probably  supply  you  vnth  some  few 
things  to  your  pui'pose. 

"  Vol.  295  among  the  Harleiau  MSS.  contains  little  re- 
markable except  some  letters  from  Henry  VHI's  amb'.  in 
Spain,  in  1518,  of  which  you  may  see  an  abstract  in  the 
printed  catalogue. 

"  In  Dr.  Hayne^s  '  Collection  of  State  Papers  in  the 
Hatfield  History,'  p.  56,  is  a  long  letter  of  the  lord  of  the 
council  of  Henry  VIII.,  in  154(3,  to  his  amb'.  with  the 
Emperor." 

TO    DR.    BIRCH. 

Extract  from  a  letter  of  Dr.  Robertson,  dated  College 
of  Edinburgh,  Oct.  8,  1765. 

"  *  *  *  I  have  met  with  many  interruptions  in  carry- 
ing on  my  '  Charles  V.,'  partly  fi'om  bad  health,  and 
partly  from  the  avocations  arising  from  performing  the 
duties  of  my  office.  But  I  am  now  mthin  sight  of  land. 
The  historical  part  of  the  work  is  finished,  and  I  am 
busy  with  a  preliminary  book,  in  which  I  propose  to  give 
a  view  of  the  progress  in  the  state  of  society,  laws,  man- 
ners, and  arts,  from  the  irruption  of  the  barbarous 
nations  to  the  beginnuig  of  the  sixteenth  century.  This 
is  a  laborious  undertaking  ;  but  I  fla^tter  myself  that  I 
shall  be  able  to  finish  it  in  a  few  months.  I  have  kept 
the  books  you  was  so  good  as  to  send  me,  and  shall 
return  them  carefully  as  soon  as  my  work  is  done." 


456  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

OF  VOLmilNOUS  WORKS   INCOMPLETE  BY 
THE  DEATHS  OF  THE  AUTHORS. 

In  those  "  Dances  of  Death  "  where  every  profession  is 
shown  as  taken  by  surprise  in  the  midst  of  their  unfin- 
ished tasks,  where  the  cook  is  viewed  in  flight,  overset- 
ting his  caldron  of  soup,  and  the  physician,  while 
inspecting  his  patient's  urinal,  is  himself  touched  by  the 
grim  visitor,  one  more  instance  of  poor  mortality  may 
be  added  in  the  writers  of  works  deigned  to  be  pursued 
through  a  long  series  of  volumes.  Tiie  French  have  an 
appropriate  designation  for  such  works,  which  they  call 
"  oiivrages  de  longue  haleine^''  and  it  has  often  happened 
that  the  haleine  has  closed  before  the  work. 

Works  of  literary  history  have  been,  particularly  sub- 
ject to  this  mortifying  check  on  intellectual  enterprise, 
and  human  life  has  not  yielded  a  sufficient  portion  for 
the  communication  of  extensive  acquirement !  After 
years  of  reading  and  writing,  the  literary  historian,  who 
in  his  innumerable  researches  is  critical  as  well  as  erudite, 
has  still  to  arbiti'ate  between  conflicting  opinions;  to 
resolve  on  the  doubtful,  to  clear  up  the  obscure,  and  to 
grasp  at  remote  researches : — but  he  dies,  and  leaves  his 
favourite  volumes  little  more  than  a  pi-oject ! 

Feelingly  the  antiquary  Hearne  laments  this  general 
forgetfulness  of  the  nature  of  all  human  concerns  in  the 
mind  of  the  antiquary,  who  is  so  busied  with  other  times 
and  so  interested  for  other  persons  than  those  about  him. 
"  It  is  the  business  of  a  good  antiquary,  as  of  a  good 
man,  to  have  mortality  always  before  him." 

A  few  illustrious  scholars  have  indeed  escaped  the  fate 
reserved  for  most  of  their  brothers.  A  long  life,  and  the 
art  of  multiplying  that  life  not  only  by  an  curly  attach- 
ment to  study,  but  by  that  order  and  arraugenicnt  which 
shortens  our  researches,  have  sufficed  for  a  iMuratori. 
With  such  a  student  time  was  a  great  capital  which  he 


OP  INCOMPLETE   YOLITMINOUS  WORKS.  457 

knew  to  put  out  at  compound  interest ;  and  tliis  Varro 
of  the  Italians,  who  performed  an  infinite  number  of 
things  in  the  circtimscribed  period  of  ordinary  life,  ap- 
|>ears  not  to  have  felt  any  dread  of  leaving  his  volumin- 
ous laboixrs  unfinished,  but  rather  of  wanting  one  to 
begin.  This  literary  Alexander  thought  he  might  want 
a  world  to  conquer !  Muratoxi  was  never  perfectly  happy 
unless  employed  in  two  large  works  at  the  same  time, 
and  so  much  dreaded  the  state  of  literary  inaction,  that 
he  was  incessantly  importuning  his  friends  to  suggest  to 
him  objects  worthy  of  his  future  composition.  The  flame 
kindled  in  his  youth  burned  clear  in  his  old  age ;  and  it 
was  in  his  senility  that  he  produced  the  twelve  quartos 
of  his  Annali  d' Italia  as  an  addition  to  his  twenty-nine 
folios  of  his  Merum  Italicarwn  Scriptores,  and  the  six 
folios  of  tlie  Atitiqtdtates  Medii  ^vi  !  Yet  these  vast 
edifices  of  history  are  not  all  which  this  illustrious  Italian 
has  raised  for  his  fatherland.  Gibbon  in  his  Miscellane- 
ous Works  has  drawn  an  admirable  character  of  Mura- 
torl 

But  such  a  fortunate  result  has  rarely  accompanied 
the  labours  of  the  literary  worthies  of  this  order.  Tira- 
boschi  indeed  lived  to  complete  his  great  national  his- 
tory of  Italian  literature  ;  but,  unhappily  for  us,  Warton, 
after  feeling  his  way  through  the  darker  ages  of  our 
poetry,  and  just  conducting  us  to  a  brighter  region,  in 
planning  the  map  of  the  country  of  which  he  had  only  a 
Pisgah  view,  expires  amid  his  volumes !  Our  poetical 
antiquary  led  us  to  the  opening  gates  of  the  paradise  of 
our  poetry,  when,  alas !  they  closed  on  him  and  on  us  ! 
The  most  precious  portion  of  Warton's  history  is  but  the 
fragment  of  a  fragment. 

Life  passes  away  in  collecting  materials — the  marble 
lies  in  blocks — and  sometimes  a  colonnade  is  erected,  or 
even  one  whole  side  of  a  palace  indicates  the  design  of 
the  architect.     Count  Mazzuchelli,  early  in  life,  formed  a 


458  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

noble  but  too  mighty  a  project,  in  wliicli,  however,  he 
considerably  advanced.  This  was  an  historical  and  criti- 
cal account  of  the  memoirs  and  the  writings  of  Italian 
authors  ;  he  even  commenced  the  publication  in  alpha- 
betical order,  but  the  six  invaluable  folios  we  possess 
only  contain  the  authors  the  initial  letters  of  whose 
names  are  A  and  B  !  This  great  literary  historian  had 
finished  for  the  press  other  volumes,  which  the  torpor  of 
his  descendants  has  suffered  to  lie  in  a  dormant  state. 
Rich  in  acquisition,  and  judicious  in  his  decisions,  the 
days  of  the  patriotic  Mazzuchelli  were  freely  given  to 
the  most  curious  and  elegant  researches  in  his  national 
literature ;  his  correspondence  is  said  to  consist  of  forty 
volumes  ;  with  eight  of  literary  memoirs,  besides  the 
lives  of  his  literary  contemporaries; — but  Europe  has 
been  defrauded  of  the  hidden  treasures. 

The  history  of  Baillet's  "  Jugemens  des  Scavans  sur 
les  Principaux  Ouvrages  des  Auteurs,"  or  Decisions  of 
the  Learned  on  the  Learned,  is  a  remarkable  instance 
how  little  the  calculations  of  writers  of  research  serve 
to  ascertain  the  period  of  their  projected  labour.  Baillet 
passed  his  life  in  the  midst  of  the  great  library  of  the 
literary  family  of  the  Lamoignons,  and  as  an  act  of  grati- 
tude arranged  a  classified  catalogue  in  thirty-two  folio 
volumes  ;  it  indicated  not  only  what  any  autlior  had  pro- 
fessedly composed  on  any  subject,  but  also  marked  those 
passages  relative  to  the  subject  which  other  writers  had 
touched  on.  By  means  of  tliis  catalogue,  the  philosophi- 
cal patron  of  Baillet  at  a  single  glance  discovered  the 
great  results  of  human  knowledge  on  any  object  of  his 
inquiries.  This  catalogue,  of  equal  novelty  and  curiosity, 
the  learned  came  to  study,  and  often  transcribed  its  pre- 
cious notices.  Amid  this  world  of  books,  the  skill  and 
labour  of  Baillet  prompted  him  to  collect  the  critical 
opinions  of  the  learned,  and  from  the  experience  he  had 
acquired  in  the  progress  of  his  colossal  catalogue,  as  a 


OF  INCOMPLETE  VOLUMINOUS  WORKS.  459 

preliminary,  sketched  one  of  the  most  magnificent  plans 
of  literary  history.  This  instructive  project  has  been 
preserved  by  Monnoye  in  his  edition.  It  consists  of  six 
large  divisions,  with  innumerable  subdivisions.  It  is  a 
map  of  the  human  mind,  and  presents  a  view  of  the 
magnitude  and  variety  of  literature,  which  few  can  con- 
ceive. The  project  was  too  vast  for  an  individual ;  it 
now  occupies  seven  quartos,  yet  it  advanced  no  farther 
than  the  critics,  translators,  and  poets,  forming  little 
more  than  the  first,  and  a  commencement  of  the  second 
great  division ;  to  more  important  classes  the  laborious 
projector  never  reached  ! 

Another  literary  history  is  the  "  Bibliotheque  Fran- 
Qoise"  of  Goujet,  left  unfinished  by  his  death.  He  had 
designed  a  classified  history  of  French  literature  ;  but  of 
its  numerous  classes  he  has  only  concluded  that  of  the 
translators,  and  not  finished  the  second  he  had  com- 
menced, of  the  poets.  He  lost  himself  in  the  obscure 
times  of  French  Literature,  and  consumed  sixteen  years 
on  his  eighteen  volumes  ! 

A  great  enterprise  of  the  Benedictines,  the*  "Histoire 
Litteraire  de  la  France,"  now  consists  of  twelve  large 
quartos,  which  even  its  successive  writers  have  only  been 
able  to  carry  down  to  the  close  of  the  twelfth  century  !* 

David  Clement,  a  bookseller,  and  a  book-lover,  designed 
the  most  extensive  bibliography  which  had  ever  appeared ; 
this  history  of"  books  is  not  a  barren  nomenclature,  the 
particulars  and  dissertations  are  sometimes  curious  :  but 
the  diligent  life  of  the  author  only  allowed  him  to  pro- 
ceed as  far  as  the  letter  H !  The  alphabetical  order 
which  some  writers  have  adopted  has  often  proved  a  sad 
memento  of  human  life  !  The  last  edition  of  our  own 
"Biographia  Britannica,"  feeble,  impei-fect,  and  inade- 
quate as  the  writers  were  to  the  task  the  booksellers  had 

*  This  work  has  been  since  resumed. 


460  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

chosen  them  to  execute,  remains  still  a  monument  which 
every  literary  Englishman  may  blush  to  see  so  hopelessly 
interrupted. 

When  Le  Grand  D'Aussy,  whose  "  Fabliaux  "  are  so 
well  known,  adopted,  in  the  warmth  of  antiquarian  imag- 
ination, the  plan  suggested  by  the  Marquis  de  Paulmy, 
first  sketched  in  the  Melanges  tires  dhme  grande  Dibli- 
othhque^  of  a  picture  of  the  domestic  life  of  the  French 
people  from  their  earliest  periods,  the  subject  broke  upon 
him  like  a  vision ;  it  had  novelty,  amusement,  and  curi- 
osity :  "  le  sujet  m'en  parut  netcf,  riche  et  piquantP  He 
revelled  amid  the  scenes  of  their  architecture,  the  inte- 
rior decorations  of  their  houses,  their  changeable  dress, 
their  games,  and  recreations ;  in  a  word,  on  all  the  parts 
which  were  most  adapted  to  amuse  the  fancy.  But  when 
he  came  to  compose  the  more  detailed  work,  the  fairy 
scene  faded  in  the  length,  the  repetition,  and  the  never- 
ending  labour  and  weariness ;  and  the  three  volumes 
which  we  now  possess,  instead  of  sports,  dresses,  and 
architecture,  exhibit  only  a  very  curious,  but  not  always 
a  very  amusing,  account  of  the  food  of  the  French 
nation. 

No  one  has  more  fully  poured  out  his  vexation  of 
spirit — he  may  excite  a  smile  in  those  who  have  never 
experienced  this  toil  of  books  and  manuscripts — but  he 
claims  the  sympathy  of  those  who  would  discharge  their 
public  duties  so  faithfully  to  the  public.  I  shall  preserve 
a  striking  picture  of  these  thousand  task-Avorks,  coloured 
by  the  literary  pangs  of  the  voluminous  author,  who  is 
doomed  never  to  finish  his  curious  work  : — 

"  Endowed  with  a  coui-age  at  all  proofs,  with  health 
which,  till  then,  was  unaltered,  and  which  excess  of 
labour  has  greatly  changed,  I  devoted  myself  to  write 
the  lives  of  the  learned  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Re- 
nouncing all  kinds  of  ple.'isure,  working  ten  to  twelve 
hours  a-day,  extracting,  ceaselessly  copying;  after  this 


OF  INCOMPLETE  VOLUMINOUS   WORKS.  461 

sad  life  I  now  wished  to  draw  breath,  turn  over  what  I 
had  amassed,  and  arrange  it.  I  found  myself  possessed  of 
many  thousands  of  hullethis^  of  which  the  longest  did  not 
exceed  many  lines.  At  the  sight  of  this  frightful  chaos, 
from  which  I  was  to  form  a  regular  history,  I  must  con- 
fess that  I  shuddered ;  I  felt  myself  for  some  time  in  a 
stupor  and  depression  of  spirits  ;  and  now  actually  that 
I  have  finished  this  work,  I  cannot  endure  the  recollec- 
tion of  that  moment  of  alarm  without  a  feeling  of  invol- 
wfitary  terror.  What  a  business  is  this,  good  God,  of  a 
compiler  !  In  truth,  it  is  too  much  condemned  ;  it  merits 
some  regard.  At  length  I  regained  courage ;  I  returned 
to  my  researches :  I  have  completed  my  plan,  though 
every  day  I  was  forced  to  add^  to  correct^  to  change  my 
facts  as  well  as  my  ideas  /  six  times  has  my  hand  re- 
copied  my  work  j  and,  however  fatiguing  this  may  be,  it 
certainly  is  not  that  portion  of  my  task  which  has  cost 
me  most." 

The  history  of  the  '*  Bibliotheca  Brittanica  "  of  the  late 
Dr.  Watt  may  serve  as  a  mortifying  example  of  the 
length  of  labour  and  the  brevity  of  life.  To  this  gigantic 
work  the  patient  zeal  of  the  writer  had  devoted  twenty 
years ;  he  had  just  arrived  at  the  point  of  publication, 
when  death  folded  down  his  last  page;  the  son  who, 
during  the  last  four  years,  had  toiled  under  the  direction 
of  his  father,  was  chosen  to  occupy  his  place.  The  work 
was  in  the  progress  of  publication,  when  the  son  also 
died ;  and  strangers  now  reap  the  fruits  of  their  com- 
bined labrurs. 

One  cannot  forbear  applying  to  this  subject  of  volumin- 
ous designs,  which  must  be  left  unfinished,  the  forcible 
reflection  of  Johnson  on  the  planting  of  trees :  "  There 
is  a  frightful  interval  between  the  seed  and  timber.  He 
that  calculates  the  growth  of  trees  has  the  unv>'elcome 
remembrance  of  the  shortness  of  life  driven  hard  upon 
him.     He  knows  that  he  is  doing  what  will  never  benefit 


462  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

himself;  and,  when  he  rejoices  to  see  the  stem  arise,  is 
disposed  to  repine  that  another  shall  cut  it  down. 


OF    DOI^IESTIC    NOVELTIES    AT    FIRST    CON- 
DEMNED. 

It  is  amusing  enough  to  discover  that  things,  now 
considered  among  the  most  useful  and  even  agreeable 
acquisitions  of  domestic  life,  on  their  first  introduction 
ran  great  risks  of  being  rejected,  by  the  ridicule  or  the 
invective  which  they  encountered.  The  repulsive  effect 
produced  on  mankind  by  the  mere  strangeness  of  a  thing, 
which  at  length  we  find  established  among  our  indispen- 
sable conveniences,  or  by  a  practice  which  has  now  become 
one  of  our  habits,  must  be  ascribed  sometimes  to  a  proud 
perversity  in  our  nature ;  sometimes  to  the  crossing  of 
our  interests,  and  to  that  repugnance  to  alter  what  is 
known  for  that  which  has  not  been  sanctioned  by  our 
experience.  This  feeling  has,  however,  within  the  last 
half  century  considerably  abated ;  but  it  proves,  as  in 
higher  matters,  that  some  philosophical  reflection  is  re- 
quired to  determine  on  the  \isefulness,  or  the  practical 
ability,  of  every  object  which  comes  in  the  shape  of 
novelty  or  innovation.  Could  we  conceive  that  man 
had  never  discovered  the  practice  of  washing  his  hands, 
but  cleansed  them  as  animals  do  their  paws,  he  would  for 
certain  have  ridiculed  and  protested  against  the  inventor 
of  soap,  and  as  tardily,  as  in  other  matters,  have  adopted 
the  invention.  A  reader,  unaccustomed  to  minute  research- 
es, might  be  surprised,  had  he  laid  before  him  the  history 
of  some  of  the  most  familiar  domestic  articles  which,  in 
their  origin,  incurred  the  ridicule  of  the  wits,  and  liad  to 
pass  through  no  short  ordeal  of  time  in  the  strenuous 
opposition  of  the  zealots  against  domestic  novelties. 
The  subject  requires  no  grave  investigation  ;  wo  will, 


DOMESTIC  NOVELTIES  AT  FIRST  CONDEMNED.      4G3 

therefore,  only  notice  a  few  of  universal  use.  They  will 
sufficiently  demonstrate  that,  however  obstinately  man 
moves  in  "  the  march  of  intellect,"  he  must  be  overtaken 
by  that  greatest  of  innovators — Time  itself;  and  that, 
by  his  eager  adoption  of  what  he  had  once  rejected,  and 
by  the  imiversal  use  of  what  he  once  deemed  unuseful, 
he  will  forget,  or  smile  at  the  difficulties  of  a  former 
generation,  who  were  baffled  in  their  attempts  to  do 
what  we  all  are  now  doing. 

Forks  are  an  Italian  invention ;  and  in  England  were 
so  .perfect  a  novelty  in  the  days  of  Queen  Bess,  that 
Fynes  Moryson,  in  his  curious  "Itinerary,"  relating  a 
bargain  with  the  patrone  of  a  vessel  which  was  to  convey 
him  from  Venice  to  Constantinople,  stipulated  to  be  fed 
at  his  table,  and  to  have  "  his  glass  or  cup  to  drink  in 
peculiar  to  himself,  with  his  knife,  spoon,  and  fork.'''' 
This  thins:  was  so  stranire  that  he  found  it  necessary  to 
describe   it.*     It   is    an  instrument  "to   hold  the  meat 

*  Modern  research  has  shown  that  forks  were  not  so  entirely  un- 
known as  was  imagined  when  the  above  was  written.  In  vol.  xxviL  of 
the  "  Archreologia,"  published  by  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  is  an 
engraving  of  a  fork  and  spoon  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  era ;  they  were 
found  with  fragments  of  ornaments  in  silver  and  brass,  all  of  which 
had  been  deposited  in  a  box.  of  which  there  were  some  decayed  re- 
mains ;  together  with  about  seventy  pennies  of  sovereigns  from  Coen- 
wolf,  King  of  Mercia  (a.d.  796),  to  Ethelstan  (a.d.  878,  890).  The  inven- 
tories of  royal  and  noble  persons  in  the  middle  ages  often  name  forks. 
They  were  made  of  precious  materials,  and  sometimes  adorned  with 
jewels  like  those  named  in  the  inventory  of  the  Duke  of  Normandy, 
■ji  1363,  "une  cuiller  d'or  et  une  fourchette,  et  aux  deux  fonts  deux 
saphirs;"  and  in  the  inventory  of  Charles  V.  of  France,  in  1380, 
"  une  cuillier  et  une  fourchette  d'or,  oh  il  y  a  ij  balays  et  X  perles." 
Their  use  seems  to  have  been  a  luxurious  appendage  to  the  dessert,  to 
lift  fruit,  or  take  sops  from  wine.  Thus  Piers  Gaveston,  the  celebrated 
favourite  of  Edward  III.,  is  described  to  have  had  three  silver  forks 
to  eat  pears  with:  and  the  Duchess  of  Orleans,  in  i:390,  had  one  fork 
of  gold  to  take  sops  from  wine  (a  prendre  la  soupe  oh.  vin).  They 
appear  to  have  been  entirely  restricted  to  tliis  use,  and  never  adopted 
as  now,  to  hft  meat  at  ordinary  meals.     They  were  carried  about  the 


464:  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

while  he  cuts  it ;  for  they  hold  it  ill-manners  that  one 
should  touch  the  meat  with  his  hands."*  At  the  close 
of  the  sixteenth  century  were  our  ancestors  eating  as 
the  Turkish  noblesse  at  present  do,  with  only  the  free  use 
of  their  fingers,  steadying  their  meat  and  conveying  it  to 
their  mouths  by  their  mere  manual  dexterity.  They 
were,  indeed,  most  indelicate  in  their  habits,  scattering 
on  the  table-cloth  all  their  bones  and  parings.  To  purify 
their  tables,  the  servant  bore  a  long  wooden  "  voiding- 
knife,"  by  which  he  scraped  the  fragments  from  the  table, 
into  a  basket,  called  "  a  voider."  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
describe  the  thing. 

They  sweep  the  table  with  a  wooden  dagger. 

Fabling  Paganism  had  probably  raised  into  a  deity  the 
little  man  who  first  taught  us,  as  Ben  Jonson  describes 
its  excellence — 

the  laudable  use  of  forks, 
To  the  sparing  of  napkins. 

This  personage  is  well-known  to  have  been  that  odd 
compound,  Coryat  the  traveller,  the  perpetual  butt  of 
the  wits.  He  positively  claims  this  immortality.  "I 
myself  thought  good  to  imitate  the  Italian  fashion  by 
this  FORKED  cutting  of  meat^  not  only  while  I  was  in 
Italy,  but  also  in  Germany,  and  oftentimes  in  England 
since  I  came  home."  Here  the  use  of  forks  was,  however, 
long  ridiculed  ;  it  was  reprobated  in  Germany,  where 
some  uncleanly  saints  actually  preached  against  the  un- 
natural custom  "  as  an  insult  on  Providence,  not  to  touch 
our  meat  with  our  fingers."  It  is  a  curious  fact,  that 
forks  were  long  interdicted  in  the  Congregation  de  St. 

person  in  decorated  cases,  and  only  used  on  certain  occasions,  and 
then  only  by  the  highest  classes;  hence  their  comparative  rarity. — 
Bd. 

*  Moryson's  "Itinerary,"  part  i.,  p.  208, 


DOMESTIC  XOVELTIES  AT  FIRST  CONDEMNED.      465 

Maur,  and  were  only  used  after  a  protracted  struggle  be- 
tween the  old  members,  zealoiis  for  their  traditions,  and 
the  young  refoi-mers,  for  their  fingers.*  The  allusions  to 
the  use  of  the  fork,  which  we  find  in  all  the  dramatic 
writers  through  the  reigns  of  James  the  First  and 
Charles  the  First,  show  that  it  was  still  considered  as  a 
strange  afifectation  and  novelty.  The  fork  does  not  ap- 
pear to  have  been  in  general  use  before  the  Restoration ! 
On  the  introduction  of  forks  there  appears  to  have  been 
some  difficulty  in  the  manner  they  were  to  be  held  and 
used.  In  The  M>x,  Sir  Politic  Would-be,  counselling 
Peregrine  at  Venice,  observes — 

Then  you  must  learn  the  use 
And  handling  of  your  silver  lork  at  meals. 

Whatever  this  art  may  be,  either  we  have  yet  to  learn 
It,  or  there  is  more  than  one  way  in  which  it  may  be 
practised.  D'Archenholtz,  in  his  "  Tableau  de  I'Angle- 
terre,"  asserts  that  "  an  Englishman  may  be  discovered 
anywhere,  if  he  be  observed  at  table,  because  he  places 
his  fork  upon  the  left  side  of  his  plate  ;  a  Frenchman- 
by  using  the  fork  alone  without  the  knife  ;  and  a  Ger, 
man,  by  planting  it  perpendicularly  into  his  plate ;  and 
a  Russian,  by  using  it  as  a  toothpick." 

Toothpicks  seem  to  have  come  in  with  forks,  as  younger 
brothers  of  the  table,  and  seem  to  have  been  boiTowed 
from  the  nice  manners  of  the  stately  Venetians.  This 
implement  of  cleanliness  was,  however,  doomed  to  the 
same  anathema  as  the  fantastical  oi-nament  of  "  the  com- 
plete Signor,"  the  Italianated  Englishman.  How  would 
the  writers,  who .  caught  "  the  manners  as  they  rise," 
have  been  astonished  that  now  no  decorous  person 
would  be  unaccompanied  by  what  Massinger  in  con- 
tempt calls 

Thy  case  of  toothpicks  and  thy  silver  fork  I 

*  I  find  this  circumstance  concerning  forks  mentioned  in  the  "  Dio 
tionnaire  de  Trevoux." 
SO 


466  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

Umbeellas,  in  my  youth,  were  not  ordinary  things ; 
few  but  the  macaroni's  of  the  day,  as  the  dandies  were 
then  called,  would  venture  to  display  them.  For  a  long 
while  it  was  not  usual  for  men  to  carry  them  without  in- 
curring the  brand  of  effeminacy ;  and  they  were  vulgarly 
considered  as  the  characteristics  of  a  person  whom  the 
mob  then  hugely  disliked — namely,  a  mincing  French- 
man. At  first  a  single  umbrella  seems  to  have  been 
kept  at  a  coffee-house  for  some  extraordinary  occasion 
— lent  as  a  coach  or  chair  in  a  heavy  shower — but  not 
commonly  cai-ried  by  the  walkers.  The  Female  Tatler 
advertises  "the  young  gentleman  belonging  to  the 
custom-house,  who,  in  fear  of  rain,  borrowed  the  umbrella 
from  Wilks'  Coffee-house,  shall  the  next  time  be  wel- 
come to  the  maid's  pattens^  An  umbrella  carried  by  a 
man  was  obviously  then  considered  an  extreme  effemi- 
nacy. As  late  as  in  1778,  one  John  Macdonald,  a  foot- 
man, who  has  written  his  own  life,  informs  us,  that  when 
he  carried  "  a  fine  silk  umbrella,  which  he  had  brought 
from  Spain,  he  could  not  with  any  comfort  to  himself  use 
it ;  the  people  calling  out  '  Frenchman  !  why  don't  you 
get  a  coach  ?'  "  The  fact  was,  that  the  hackney-coachmen 
and  the  chairmen,  joining  with  the  true  es2)rit  de  corj^Sy 
were  clamorous  against  this  portentous  rival.  This  foot- 
man, in  1778,  gives  us  furtlicr  information: — "At  this 
time  there  were  no  umbrellas  worn  in  London,  except  in 
noblemen's  and  gentlemen's  houses,  where  there  was  a 
large  one  hung  in  the  hall  to  hold  over  a  lady  or  a  gen- 
tleman, if  it  rained,  between  the  door  and  their  carriage." 
His  sister  was  compelled  to  quit  his  arm  one  day,  from 
the  abuse  he  drew  down  on  himself  by  his  umbrella. 
Hut  he  adds  that  "he  persisted  for  three  months,  till 
they  took  no  further  notice  of  this  novelty.  Foreigners 
began  to  use  theirs,  and  then  the  English.  Now  it  ir 
become  a  great  trade  in  London."*     The  state  of  our 

*  Umbrellas  are,  liowovor,  au  inveution  of  great  antiquitj,  and  maV 


DOMESTIC  NOVELTIES  AT  FIRST  CONDEMNED.     407 

population  might  now,  in  some  degree,  be  ascertained  by 
the  number  of  umbrellas. 

Coaches,  on  their  first  invention,  offered  a  fruitful 
source  of  declamation,  as  an  inordinate  luxury,  particu- 
larly among  the  ascetics  of  monkish  Spain.  The  Spanish 
biographer  of  Don  John  of  Austria,  describing  that 
golden  age,  the  good  old  times,  when  they  only  used 
"  carts  drawn  by  oxen,  riding  in  this  manner  to  court," 
notices  that  it  was  found  necessary  to  prohibit  coaches 
by  a  royal  proclamation,  "  to  such  a  height  was  this 
infernal  vice  got,  which  has  done  so  much  injury  to  Cas- 
tile," In  this  style  nearly  every  domestic  novelty  has 
been  attacked.  The  injury  inflicted  on  Castile  by  the 
introduction  of  coaches  could  only  have  been  felt  by  the 
purveyors  of  carts  and  oxen  for  a  morning's  ride.  The 
same  circumstances  occurred  in  this  country.  When 
coaches  began  to  be  kept  by  the  gentry,  or  were  hired 
out,  a  powerful  party  found  their  "  occupation  gone !" 
Ladies  would  no  longer  ride  on  pillions  behind  their  foot 
men,  nor  would  take  the  air,  where  the  air  was  purest,  on 
the  river.  Judges  and  counsellors  from  their  inns  would 
no  longer  be  conveyed  by  water  to  Westminister  Hall,  or 
jog  on  with  all  their  gravity  on  a  poor  palfrey.  Consid- 
erable bodies  of  men  were  thrown  out  of  their  habitual  ' 
employments — the  watennen,  the  hackneymen,  and  the 

be  seen  in  the  sculptures  of  ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria.  They  are 
also  depicted  on  early  Greek  vases.  But  the  most  curious  fact  con- 
nected with  their  use  in  this  country  seems  to  be  the  knowledge  our 
Saxon  ancestors  had  of  them;  though  the  use,  in  accordance  with  the 
earliest  custom,  appears  to  have  been  as  a  shelter  or  mark  of  distinc- 
tion for  royalty.  In  Ciedmon's  "  Metrical  Paraphrase  of  Parts  of 
Scripture,"  now  in  the  British  Museum  (Harleiaa  MS.  No.  603),  an 
Anglo-Saxon  manuscript  of  the  tenth  centur}',  is  the  drawing  of  a 
king,  who  has  an  umbrella  held  over  his  head  by  an  attendant,  in  the 
Bame  way  as  it  is  borne  over  modern  eastern  kings.  The  form  is  pre- 
cisely similar  to  those  now  in  use,  though,  as  noted  above,  they  were 
an  entire  novelty  when  re-introduced  in  the  last  century. — Ed. 


468  LITERARY  CHAJIACTER. 

saddlers.  Families  were  now  jolted,  in  a  heavy  wooden 
machine,  into  splendour  and  ruin.  The  disturbances  and 
opposition  these  coaches  created  we  should  hardly  now 
have  known,  had  not  Taylor,  the  Water-poet  *  and  man, 
sent  down  to  us  an  invective  against  coaches,  in  1623, 
dedicated  to  all  who  are  grieved  with  "  the  world  run- 
ning on  wheels." 

Taylor,  a  humorist  and  satbist,  as  well  as  watennan, 
conveys  some  information  in  this  rare  tract  of  the  period 
when  coaches  began  to  be  more  generally  used — "  Within 
our  memories  our  nobility  and  gentry  could  ride  well- 
mounted,  and  sometimes  walk  on  foot  gallantly  attended 
with  fourscore  brave  fellows  in  blue  coats,  which  was  a 
glory  to  our  nation  far  greater  than  forty  of  these 
leathern  timbrels.  Then  the  name  of  a  coach  was  heathen 
Greek.  Who  ever  saw,  but  upon  extraordinary  occasions, 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Sir  Francis  Drake  ride  in  a  coach  ? 
They  made  small  use  of  coaches ;  there  were  but  few  in 
those  times,  and  they  were  deadly  foes  to  sloth  and 
effeminacy.  It  is  in  the  memory  of  many  when  in  the 
whole  kingdom  there  was,  not  one !  It  is  a  doubtful 
question  -^^hether  the  devil  brought  tobacco  into  England 
in  a  coach^  for  both  appeared  at  the  same  time."  It  ap- 
pears that  families,  for  the  sake  of  their  exterior  show, 
miserably  contracted  their  domestic  establishment;  for 
Taylor,  the  Water-poet,  complains  that  when  they  used 
formerly  to  keep  from  ten  to  a  hundred  proper  serving- 
men,  they  now  made  the  best  shift,  and  for  the  sake  of 
their  coach  and  horses  had  only  "  a  butterfly  page,  a 
trotting  footman,  and  a  stiff-drinking  coachman,  a  cook, 
a  clerk,  a  steward,  and  a  butler,  which  hatli  forced  an 
army  of  tall  fellows  to  the  gatehouses,"  or  prisons.     Of 

♦  Taylor  was  originally  a  Thames  waterman,  hence  the  term, 
"Water-poet"  given  him.  His  attack  upon  coaches  was  published 
with  this  quaint  title,  "  The  world  runues  on  wheeles,  or,  odds,  betwixt 
carts  and  coaches."     It  is  an  unsparing  satire. — Ed. 


DOMESTIC   NOVELTIES  AT  FIRST   CONDEMNED.      469 

one  of  the  evil  effects  of  this  new  fashion  of  coach-riding 
this  satirist  of  the  town  wittily  observes,  that,  as  soon  as 
a  man  was  knighted,  his  lady  was  lamed  for  ever,  and 
could  not  on  any  account  be  seen  but  in  a  coach.  As 
hitherto  our  females  had  been  accustomed  to  robust 
exercise,  on  foot  or  on  horseback,  they  were  now  foi'ced 
to  substitute  a  domestic  artificial. exercise  in  sawing  bil- 
lets, swinging,  or  rolling  the  great  roller  in  the  alleys  of 
their  garden.  In  the  change  of  this  new  fashion  they 
found  out  the  inconvenience  of  a  sedentary  life  passed  in 
then*  coaches.* 

Even  at  this  early  period  of  the  introduction  of  coaches, 
they  were  not  only  costly  in  the  ornaments — in  velvets, 
damasks,  taffetas,  silver  and  gold  lace,  fringes  of  all 
BOX'ts — ^but  their  greatest  pains  were  in  matching  their 
coach-horses.  "  They  must  be  all  of  a  colour,  longitude, 
latitude,  cressitude,  height,  length,  thickness,  breadth  (I 
muse  they  do  not  weigh  them  in  a  pair  of  balances)  ;  and 
when  once  matched  with  a  great  deal  of  care,  if  one  of 
them  chance  to  die,  then  is  the  coach  maimed  till  a  meet 
mate  be  found,  whose  corresponding  may  be  as  equivalent 
to  the  surviving  palfrey,  in  all  respects,  as  like  as  a  broom 
to  a  besom,  barm  to  yeast,  or  codlings  to  boiled  aj)ples." 
This  is  good  natural  humour.     He  proceeds — "They  use 

*  Stow,. in  his  "  Chronicles,"  has  preserved  the  date  of  the  first  in- 
troduction of  coaches  into  England,  as  well  as  the  name  of  the  first 
driver,  and  first  English  coachmaker.  "In  the  year  1564  Guilliaiu 
Boonen,  a  Dutchman,  became  the  queen's  coachman,  and  was  the  first 
that  brought  the  use  of  coaches  into  England.  After  a  while  divers 
great  ladies,  with  as  great  jealousie  of  the  queen's  displeasure,  made 
them  coaches,  and  rid  in  them  up  and  down  the  country,  to  the  great 
admiration  of  all  the  beholders;  but  thon,  by  little  and  little,  they 
grew  usual  among  the  nobility  and  others  of  sorte,  and  within  twenty 
years  became  a  great  trade  of  coachmaking;"  and  he  al*)  notes  that 
in  the  year  of  their  introduction  to  England  '•  Walter  Rippon  made  a 
codie  for  the  Earl  of  Rutland,  which  was  the  first  cx>che  that  was  ever 
made  in  England." — Ed. 


470  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

more  diligence  in  matching  their  coach-horses  than  in  the 
maniage  of  their  sons  and  daughters."  A  great  fashion, 
in  its  novelty,  is  often  extravagant;  true  elegance  and 
utility  are  never  at  first  combined ;  good  sense  and 
experience  correct  its  cajji'ices.  They  appear  to  have 
exhausted  more  cost  and  curiosity  in  their  equipages,  on 
their  first  introduction,  than  since  they  have  become  ob- 
jects of  ordinary  use.  Notwithstanding  this  humorous 
invective  on  the  calamity  of  coaches,  and  that  "  house- 
keepmg  never  decayed  till  coaches  came  into  England ; 
a.nd  that  a  ten-pound  rent  now  was  scarce  twenty  shil- 
lings then,  till  the  \vatchcraft  of  the  coach  quickly  mounted 
the  price  of  all  things."  The  Water-poet,  were  he  now 
living,  might  have  acknowledged  that  if,  in  the  changes 
of  time,  some  trades  disappear,  other  trades  rise  up, 
and  in  an  exchange  of  modes  of  industry  the  nation  loses 
nothing.  The  hands  which,  like  Taylor's,  rowed  boats, 
came  to  drive  coaches.  These  complainers  on  all  novel- 
ties, unawares  always  answer  themselves.  Our  satirist 
aflfords  us  a  most  prosperous  view  of  the  condition  of 
"  this  new  trade  of  coachmakers,  as  the  gainfullest  about 
the  town.  They  are  apparelled  in  sattins  and  velvets, 
are  masters  of  the  parish,  vestrymen,  and  fare  like  the 
Emperor  Heliogabalus  and  Sardanapalus — seldom  with- 
out their  mackeroones,  Parmisants  (macaroni,  with  Par- 
mesan cheese,  I  suppose),  jellies  and  kickshaws,  with 
baked  swans,  pastries  hot  or  cold,  red-deer  pies,  which 
they  have  from  their  debtors,  worships  in  the  country !" 
Such  was  the  sudden  luxurious  state  of  our  first  great 
coachmakers  !  to  the  deadly  mortification  of  all  water- 
men, hacknoymcn,  and  other  conveyancers  of  our 
loungers,  thi-own  out  of  employ  ! 

Tobacco. — It  was  tliouglit,  at  the  time  of  its  introduc- 
tion, that  the  nation  would  be  ruined  by  the  use  of 
tobacco.  Like  all  novel  tastes  the  newly-imported  leaf 
maddened  all  ranks  among  us.     "  The  money  spent  in 


DOMESTIC  ifOYELTIES  AT  FIBST  CONDEMNED.      47^ 

smoke  is  unknown,"  said  a  writer  of  that  day,  lamenting 
over  this  "  new  trade  of  tobacco,  in  which  he  feared  that 
there  were  more  than  seven  thousand  tobacco-houses." 
James  the  First,  in  his  memorable  "Counterblast  to 
Tobacco,"  only  echoed  from  the  throne  the  popular  cry ; 
but  the  blast  was  too  weak  against  the  smoke,  and  vainly 
his  paternal  majesty  attempted  to  ten-ify  his  liege  chil- 
dren that  "  they  were  making  a  sooty  kitchen  in  their 
inward  parts,  soiling  and  infecting  them  with  an  unctuous 
kind  of  soot,  as  hath  been  found  in  some  great  tobacco- 
eaters,  that  after  their  death  were  opened."  The  infor- 
mation was  perhaps  a  pious  fraud.  This  tract,  which 
has  incurred  so  much  ridicule,  was,  in  truth,  a  merito- 
rious effort  to  allay  the  extravagance  of  the  moment. 
But  such  popular  excesses  end  themselves ;  and  the 
royal  author  might  have  left  the  subject  to  the  town- 
satirists  of  the  day,  who  found  the  theme  inexhaustible 
for  ridicule  or  invective. 

Coal. — The  established  use  of  our  ordinary  fuel,  coal, 
may  be  ascribed  to  the  scarcity  of  wood  in  the  environs 
of  the  metropolis.  Its  recommendation  was  its  cheap- 
ness, however  it  destroys  everything  about  us.  It  has 
formed  an  artificial  atmosphere  which  envelopes  the  gre&t 
capital,  and  it  is  acknowledged  that  a  purer  air  has 
often  proved  fatal  to  him  who,  from  early  life,  has  only 
breathed  in  sulphur  and  smoke.  Charles  Fox  or^ce  r-^vl 
to  a  friend,  "  I  cannot  live  in  the  country ;  my  constitu 
tion  is  not  strong  enough."  Evelyn  poured  out  a  famous 
invective  against  "London  Smoke."  "Imagine,"  he 
cries,  "  a  solid  tentorium  or  canopy  over  London,  Avhat  a 
mass  of  smoke  would  then  stick  to  it !  This  fuliginous 
crust  now  comes  down  every  night  on  the  streets,  on  our 
houses,  the  waters,  and  is  taken  into  our  bodies.  On  the 
water  it  leaves  a  thin  web  or  pellicle  of  dust  dancing  upon 
the  surface  of  it,  as  those  who  bath  in  the  Thames  dis- 
cern, and   bring   home  on  their   bodies."      Evelyn   has 


472  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

detailed  the  gradual  destruction  it  effects  on  every 
article  of  ornament  and  price ;  and  "  he  heard  in  France, 
that  those  parts  lying  southwest  of  England,  complain 
of  being  infected  with  smoke  from  our  coasts,  which 
injured  their  vines  in  flowei-."  I  have  myself  observed 
at  Paris,  that  the  books  exposed  to  sale  on  stalls,  however 
old  they  might  be,  retained  their  freshness,  and  were  in 
no  instance  like  our  own,  corroded  and  blackened,  which 
our  coal-smoke  never  fails  to  produce.  There  was  a  pro- 
clamation, so  far  back  as  Edward  the  First,  forbidding 
the  use  of  sea-coal  in  the  suburbs,  on  a  complaint  of  the 
nobility  and  gentry,  that  they  could  not  go  to  London 
on  account  of  the  noisome  smell  and  thick  air.  About 
1550,  Hollingshed  foresaw  the  general  use  of  sea-coal 
from  the  neglect  of  cultivating  timber.  Coal  fires  have 
now  been  in  general  use  for  three  centuries.  In  the 
country  they  persevered  in  using  wood  and  peat.  Those 
who  were  accustomed  to  this  sweeter  smell  declared  that 
they  always  knew  a  Londoner,  by  the  smell  of  his  clothes, 
to  have  come  from  coal-fires.  It  must  be  acknowledged 
that  our  custom  of  using  coal  for  our  fuel  has  prevailed 
over  good  reasons  why  we  ought  not  to  have  preferred 
it.  But  man  accommodates  himself  even  to  an  offensive 
thing  whenever  his  interest  predominates. 

Were  we  to  caiTy  on  a  speculation  of  this  nature  into 
graver  topics,  we  should  have  a  copious  chapter  to  write 
of  the  opposition  to  new  discoveries.  Medical  history 
supplies  no  luiiitlportant  number.  On  the  improvements 
in  anatomy  by  Malpighi  and  his  fi)llowers,  the  senior  pro- 
fessoi's  of  the  university  of  Bononia  were  inflamed  to  such 
a  pitch  that  they  attempted  to  insert  an  additional  clause 
in  the  solemn  oath  taken  by  the  graduates,  to  the  effect 
that  they  would  not  permit  the  principles  and  conclu- 
sions of  IIippocrat(!s,  Aristotle,  and  Galen,  which  had 
been  approved  of  so  many  ages,  to  be  overturned  by  any 
person.     In    phlebotomy   we   have   a   curious    instance. 


DOMESTIC  NOVELTIES  AT  FIRST  CONDEMNED.     473 

In  Spain,  to  the  sixteenth  centmy,  they  maintained  that 
when  the  pain  was  on  the  one  side  they  ought  to  bleed 
on  the  other.  A  great  physician  insisted  on  a  contrary 
practice ;  a  civil  war  of  opinion  divided  Spain  ;  at  length 
they  had  recourse  to  coiirts  of  law ;  the  novelists  were 
condemned ;  they  appealed  to  the  emperor,  Charles  the 
Fifth ;  he  was  on  the  point  of  confirming  the  decree  of 
the  court,  when  the  Duke  of  Savoy  died  of  a  pleurisy, 
having  been  legitimately  bled.  This  puzzled  the  em- 
peror, who  did  not  venture  on  a  decision. 

The  introduction  of  antimony  and  the  Jesuits'  bark  also 
provoked  legislative  interference ;  decrees  and  ordinances 
were  issued,  and  a  civil  war  raged  among  the  medical 
faculty,  of  which  Guy  Patin  is  the  copious  historian. 
Vesalius  was  incessantly  persecuted  by  the  public  pre- 
judices against  dissection ;  Harvey's  discovery  of  the 
circulation  of  the  blood  led  to  so  protracted  a  contro- 
versy, that  the  great  discovery  was  hardty-  admitted  even 
in  the  latter  days  of  the  old  man ;  Lady  Wortley  Mon- 
tague's introduction  of  the  practice  of  inoculation  met 
the  same  obstinate  resistance  as,  more  recently,  that  of 
vaccination  startled  the  people.  Thus  objects  of  the 
highest  importance  to  mankind,  on  their  first  appearance, 
are  slighted  and  contemned.  Posterity  smiles  at  the 
ineptitude  of  the  preceding  age,  while  it  becomes  familiar 
with  those  objects  which  that  age  has  so  eagerly  rejected. 
Time  is  a  tardy  patron  of  true  knowledge. 

A  nobler  theme  is  connected  with  the  principle  we 
have  here  but  touched  on — the  gradual  changes  in  public 
opinion — the  utter  annihilation  of  false  notions,  like 
those  of  witchcraft,  astrology,  spectres,  and  many  other 
superstitions  of  no  remote  date,  the  hideous  progeny  of 
imposture  got  on  ignorance,  and  audacity  on  fear.  But 
one  impostor  reigns  paramount,  the  plausible  opposition 
to  novel  doctrines  which  may  be  subversive  of  some 
ancient  ones ;  doctrines  which  probably  shall  one  day  be 


474  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

as  generally  established  as  at  present  they  are  utterly 
decried,  and  which  the  interests  of  corporate  bodies 
oppose  with  all  their  cumbrous  machinery ;  but  artificial 
machinery  becomes  perplexed  in  its  movements  when 
worn  out  by  the  friction  of  ages. 


DOMESTICITY;    OR,    A    DISSERTATION    ON 
SERVANTS. 

The  characteristics  of  servants  have  been  usually 
known  by  the  broad  caricatures  of  the  satirists  of  every 
age,  and  chiefly  by  the  most  popular — the  writers  of 
comedy.  According  to  these  exhibitions,  we  must  infer 
that  the  vices  of  the  menial  are  necessarily  inherent  to 
his  condition,  and  consequently  that  this  vast  multitude 
in  society  remain  ever  in  an  ii'recoverably  ungovernable 
state.  We  discover  only  the  cunning  depredator  of  the 
household  ;  the  tip-toe  spy,  at  all  corners — all  ear,  all 
eye :  the  parasitical  knave — the  flatterer  of  the  follies, 
and  even  the  eager  participator  of  the  crimes,  of  his 
superior.  The  morality  of  servants  has  not  been  im- 
proved by  the  wonderful  revelations  of  Swift's  "  Direc- 
tions," where  the  irony  is  too  refined,  while  it  plainly 
inculcates  the  practice.  This  celebrated  tract,  designed 
for  the  instruction  of  the  masters,  is  more  frequently 
thumbed  in  the  kitchen,  as  a  manual  for  the  profligate 
domestic.  Servants  have  acknowledged  that  some  of 
their  base  doings  have  been  suggested  to  them  by  their 
renowned  satirist. 

Bentham  imagined,  that  were  all  the  methods  employed 
by  thieves  and  rogues  described  and  collected  together, 
such  a  com])ilation  of  their  artifices  and  villanies  would 
serve  to  put  us  on  our  guard.  The  theorist  of  legisla- 
tion seems  often  to  forget  the  metaphysical  state  of  man. 
With  the  vitiated  mind,  that  latent    sympathy  of  evil 


DISSERTATION   ON   SERVANTS.  475 

which  might  never  have  been  called  forth  but  by  the 
occasion,  has  often  evinced  how  too  close  an  inspection 
of  crime  may  grow  into  criminality  itself  Hence  it  is, 
that  when  some  monstrous  and  unusual  crime  has  been 
revealed  to  the  public,  it  rarely  passes  without  a  sad 
repetition.  A  link  in  the  chain  of  the  intellect  is  struck, 
and  a  crime  is  perpetrated  which  else  had  not  occurred. 

Listen  to  the  counsels  which  one  of  the  livery  gives  a 
brother,  more  stupid  but  more  innocent  than  himself.  I 
take  the  passage  from  that  extraordinary  Spanish  come- 
dy, in  twenty-five  acts,  the  Spanish  Bawd.  It  was  no 
doubt  designed  to  expose  the  arts  and  selfishness  of  the 
domestic,  yet  we  should  regret  that  the  Spanish  Bawd 
was  as  generally  read  by  servants  as  Swift's  "Direc- 
tions " : — 

"  Serve  not  your  master  with  this  foolish  loyalty  and 
ignorant  honesty,  thinking  to  find  firmness  on  a  false 
foundation,  as  most  of  these  masters  now-a-days  are. 
Gain  friends,  which  is  a  during  and  lasting  commodity ; 
live  not  on  hopes,  relying  on  the  vain  promises  of  mas- 
ters. The  masters  love  more  themselves  than  their  serv- 
ants, nor  do  they  amiss ;  and  the  like  love  ought  servants 
to  bear  to  themselves.  Liberahty  was  lost  long  ago — 
rewards  are  grown  out  of  date.  Every  one  is  now  for 
himself,  and  makes  the  best  he  can  of  his  servant's  serv- 
ice, serving  his  turn,  and  therefore  they  ought  to  do  the 
same,  for  they  are  less  in  substance.  Thy  master  is  one 
who  befools  his  servants,  and  wears  them  out  to  the  very 
stmnps,  looking  for  much  service  at  then-  hands.  Thy 
master  cannot  be  thy  friend,  such  diflerence  is  there  of 
estate  and  condition  between  you  two." 

This  passage,  written  two  centuries  ago,  would  find  an 
echo  of  its  sentiments  in  many  a  modern  domestic.  These 
notions  are  sacred  traditions  among  the  livery.  We  may 
trace  them  from  Terence  and  Plautus,  as  well  as  Swift 
and  Mandeville.     Our  latter  great  cynic  has  left  a  fright- 


476  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

ful  picture  of  the  state  of  the  domestics,  when  it  seems 
"  they  had  experienced  professors  among  them,  who 
could  instruct  the  graduates  in  iniquity  seven  hundred 
illiberal  arts  how  to  cheat,  impose  upon,  and  find  out  the 
blind  side  of  their  masters."  The  footinen,  in  Mande- 
ville's  day,  had  entered  into  a  society  together,  and  made 
laws  to  regulate  their  wages,  and  not  to  carry  burdens 
above  two  or  three  pounds  weight,  and  a  common  fund 
Avas  provided  to  maintain  any  suit  at  law  against  any 
rebellious  master.  This  seems  to  be  a  confederacy  which 
is  by  no  means  dissolved. 

Lord  Chesterfield  advises  his  son  not  to  allow  his  upper 
man  to  doif  his  livery,  though  this  valet  was  to  attend 
his  person,  when  the  toilet  was  a  serious  avocation  re- 
quiring a  more  delicate  hand  and  a  nicer  person  than  he 
who  was  to  walk  before  his  chair,  or  climb  behind  his 
coach.  This  searching  genius  of  philosophy  and  les 
petites  mceurs  solemnly  warned  that  if  ever  this  man  were 
to  cast  off  the  badge  of  his  order,  he  never  would  resume 
it.  About  this  period  the  masters  were  menaced  by  a 
sort  of  servile  war.  The  famous  farce  of  High  Life  her 
low  Stairs  exposed  with  great  happiness  the  impudence 
and  the  delinquencies  of  the  parti-coloured  clans.  It 
roused  them  into  the  most  barefaced  opposition ;  and,  as 
ever  happens  to  the  few  who  press  unjust  claims  on  the 
many,  in  the  result  worked  the  reform  they  so  greatly 
dreaded.*     One  of  the  grievances  in  society  was  then  an 

*  The  farce  was  prodacod  in  1759,  when  it  was  tlie  custom  to  admit 
any  servant  in  livery  free  to  the  upper  gallery,  as  they  were  supposed 
to  be  in  attendance  on  tlieir  masters.  Their  foibles  and  dishonesty 
being  so  completely  hit  oiT  in  the  play  incensed  them  greatly ;  and 
they  created  such  an  uproar  that  it  was  resolved  to  exclude  them  in 
future.  Tn  Eiiinburgli  the  opposition  to  the  play  produced  still  greater 
scones  of  violence,  and  the  lives  of  some  of  the  performers  were  threat- 
ened. It  at  last  became  nocessarj''  for  their  masters  to  stop  this  out- 
break on  the  part  of  their  servants;  and  alter  the  whole  system  of  the 
household  economy  vvliich  led  to  such  results. — Ed. 


DISSERTATION   ON   SERVANTS.  477 

anomalous  custom,  for  it  was  only  practised  in  our  country, 
of  a  guest  being  highly  taxed  in  dining  with  a  family  whose 
establishment  admitted  of  a  mmi(irous  train.  Watchful 
of  the  depai'ture  of  the  guest,  this  victim  had  to  pass  along 
a  line  of  domestics,  arranged  in  the  hall,  each  man  jire- 
senting  the  \nsitor  with  some  separate  article,  of  hat, 
gloves,  coat,  and  cane,  claiming  their  "  vails."  It  would 
not  have  been  safe  to  refuse  even  those  who,  with  noth- 
ing to  present,  still  held  out  the  hand,  for  their  attentions 
to  the  diner-out.* 

When  a  slave  was  deemed  not  a  person,  but  a  thing 
marketable  and  transferable,  the  sir;  le  principle  judged 
suiRcient  to  regulate  the  mutual  co:.  aict  of  the  master 
and  the  domestic  was,  to  command  and  to  obey.  It 
seems  still  the  sole  stipulation  exacted  by  the  haughty 
from  the  menial.  But  this  feudal  principle,  unalleviated 
by  the  just  sympathies  of  domesticity,  deprives  authority 
of  its  grace,  and  service  of  its  zeal.  To  be  served  well, 
we  should  be  loved  a  little ;  the  command  of  an  excellent 
master  is  even  grateful,  for  the  good  servant  delights  to 
be  useful.  The  slave  repines,  and  such  is  the  domestic 
destitute  of  any  personal  attachment  for  his  master. 
Whoever  was  mindful  of  the  interests  of  him  whose 
beneficence  is  only  a  sacrifice  to  his  pomp  ?  The  master 
dresses  and  wages  highly  his  pampered  train ;  but  this  is 

*  These  vails,  supposed  to  be  the  free  gratuity  of  the  invited  to  the 
servants  of  the  inviter,  were  ultimately  so  managed  that  persons  paid 
servants  by  that  mode  only — levying  a  kind  of  black-mail  on  their 
friends,  which  ran  through  all  society.  "  The  wages  are  nothing," 
says  a  noble  lady's  servant  in  one  of  Smollet's  novels,  "  but  the  vails 
are  enormous."  The  consequence  was,  that  masters  and  mistresses 
had  little  control  over  them ;  they  are  said  in  some  instances  to  have 
paid  for  their  places,  as  some  servants  do  at  inns,  where  the  situation 
was  worth  having,  owing  to  the  large  parties  ^ven,  and  gaming,  then 
so  prevalent,  being  well-attended.  It  was  ended  by  a  mutual  under- 
standing all  over  the  three  kingdoms,  after  the  riots  which  resulted 
from  the  production  of  the  play  noted  above. — Ed. 


478  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

the  calculated  cost  of  state-liveries,  of  men  measured  by 
a  standard,  for  a  Hercules  in  the  Hall,  or  an  Adonis  for 
the  drawing-room ;  but  at  those  times,  when  the  domestic 
ceases  to  be  an  object  in  the  public  eye,  he  sinks  into  an 
object  of  sordid  economy,  or  of  merciless  caprice.  His 
personal  feelings  ai'e  recklessly  neglected.  He  sleeps 
where  there  is  neither  light  nor  air ;  he  is  driven  when 
l.e  is  already  exhausted  ;  he  begins  the  work  of  midnight, 
.«  d  is  confined  for  hours  with  men  like  himself,  who  fret, 
repine,  and  cui'se.  They  have  their  tales  to  compare 
together ;  their  xmhallowed  secrets  to  disclose.  The  mas- 
ters and  the  mistresses  pass  by  them  in  review,  and  little 
deem  they  how  oft  the  malignant  glance  or  the  malicious 
whisper  follow  their  airy  steps.  To  shorten  such  tedious 
hours,  the  servants  familiarise  themselves  with  every 
vicious  indulgence,  for  even  the  occupation  of  such  do- 
mestics is  little  more  than  a  dissolute  idleness.  A  cell  in 
Newgate  does  not  always  contain  more  corruptors  than  a 
herd  of  servants  congregated  in  our  winter  halls.  It  is 
to  be  lamented  that  the  modes  of  fashionable  life  demand 
the  most  terrible  sacrifices  of  the  health,  the  happiness, 
and  the  morals  of  servants.  Whoever  perceives  that 
he  is  held  in  no  esteem  stando  degraded  in  his  own 
thoughts.  The  heart  of  the  simple  throbs  with  this 
emotfion ;  but  it  hardens  the  villain  who  would  rejoice 
to  avenge  himself:  it  makes  the  artful  only  the  more 
cuunirrg;  it  extorts  from  the  sullen  a  cold  unwilling 
obedience,  and  it  stings  even  the  good-tempered  into 
hisolence. 

South,  as  great  a  \vit  as  a  preacher,  has  separated,  by 
an  awful  interval,  the  superior  and  the  domestic.  "  A 
servant  dwells  i-emote  from  all  knowledge  of  his  lord's 
purposes  ;  he  lives  as  a  kind  of  foreigner  under  the  same 
roof;  a  domestic,  yet  a  foreigner  too."  This  exhibits  a 
][)i{^ture  of  feudal  manners.  But  the  progress  of  society 
in  modern  Europe  has  since  passed  through  a  miglity 


OISSERTATIOX   ON   SERVANTS.  479 

evolution.  In  the  visible  change  of  habits,  of  feelings, 
of  social  life,  the  humble  domestic  has  approximated  to, 
and  communicated  more  frequently  even  with  "  his  lord," 
The  domestic  is  now  not  always  a  stranger  to  "his  lord's 
purposes,"  but  often  their  faithful  actor — their  confiden- 
tial counsellor — the  mirror  in  which  his  lordship  contem- 
plates on  his  wishes  personified. 

This  reflection,  indeed,  would  have  violated  the  dignity 
of  the  noble  friend  of  Swift,  Lord  Orrerj^  His  lordship 
censures  the  laughter  in  "  Rabelais'  easy  chair  "  for  having 
directed  such  intense  attention  to  affairs  solely  relating  to 
servants.  "  Let  him  jest  with  dignity,  and  let  him  be 
ironical  upon  useful  subjects,  leaving  2^oor  slaves  to  eat 
their  porridge,  or  drink  their  small  beer,  in  such  vessels  as 
they  shall  think  proper."  This  loi'dly  criticism  has  drawn 
down  the  lightning  of  Sir  Walter  Scott: — "The  noble 
lord's  feelings  of  dignitv  leemed  nothing  worthy  of  atten- 
tion that  was  unconnected  ;vith  the  highest  orders  of 
society."  Such,  in  truth,  was  too  long  the  vicious  prin- 
ciple of  those  monopolists  of  personal  distinction,  the 
mere  men  of  elevated  rank. 

Metropolitan  servants,  trained  in  depravity,  are  inca- 
pacitated to  comprehend  hoM''  far  the  personal  interests 
of  servants  are  folded  up  with  the  interests  of  the  house 
they  inhabit.  They  are  unconscious  that  they  have  any 
Bhare  in  the  welfare  of  the  superior,  save  in  the  degree 
that  the  prosperity  of  the  master  contributes  to  the  base 
and  momentary  purjDOses  of  the  servant.  But  in  small 
communities  we  perceive  how  the  affections  of  the  master 
and  the  domestic  may  take  root.  Look  in  an  ancient  re- 
tired family,  whose  servants  often  haA'e  been  born  under 
the  roof  they  inhabit,  and  where  the  son  is  serving  where 
the  father  still  serves  ;  and  sometimes  call  the  sacred  spot 
of  their  cradle  and  their  grave  by  the  proud  and  endear- 
ing term  of  "  o  .r  house."  We  discover  this  in  Avhole 
countries  where  luxury  has  not  removed  the  classes  of 


4-80  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

p.-ciety  at  too  wide  distances  from  each  other,  to  deaden 
their  s/mpathies.  We  behold  this  in  agrestic  Switzer- 
land, among  its  villages  and  its  pastures ;  in  France, 
amon}--  its  difct.int  provinces  ;  in  Italy,  in  some  of  its  de- 
cayed cities ;  and  in  Germany,  where  simple  manners  and 
sti'ong  affections  mark  the  inhabitants  of  certain  localities. 
Holland  long  preserved  its  primitive  customs  ;  and  there 
the  love  of  order  promotes  subordination,  though  its  free 
institutions  have  softened  the  distinctions  in  the  ranks 
of  life,  and  thei-e  we  find  a  remarkable  evidence  of  domes- 
ticity. It  is  not  unusual  in  Holland  for  servants  to  call- 
their  masters  uncle,  their  mistresses  aunt,  and  the  children 
of  the  family  their  cousins.  These  domestics  participa 
ting  in  the  comforts  of  the  family,  become  naturalized 
and  domiciliated  ;  and  their  extraordinary  relatives  are 
often  adopted  by  the  heart.  An  heroic  effort  of  these 
domestics  has  been  rec  rded ;  it  occurred  at  the  burning 
of  the  theatre  at  Amsterdan.,  where  many  rushed  into  the 
flames,  and  nobly  perished  in  the  attempt  to  save  their 
endeared  families. 

It  is  in  limited  communities  that  the  domestic  virtues 
are  most  intense ;  all  concentrating  themselves  in  their 
private  circles,  in  such  localities  there  is  no  public — no 
public  which  extorts  so  many  sacrifices  from  the  individ- 
ual. Insular  situations  are  usually  remarkable  for  the 
warm  attachment  and  devoted  fidelity  of  the  domestic, 
and  the  personal  regard  of  families  for  their  servants. 
This  genuine  domesticity  is  strikingly  displayed  in  the 
island  of  I^agusa,  on  the  coast  of  Dalraatia :  for  there 
they  provide  for  the  happiness  of  the  humble  friends 
of  the  house.  Boys,  at  an  early  age,  are  received  into 
families,  educated  in  writing,  reading,  and  arithmetic. 
Some  only  quit  their  abode,  in  which  they  were  almost 
born,  when  tempted  by  the  stirring  spirit  of  maritime 
enterprise.  They  form  a  race  of  men  who  are  much 
Bought  after  for  servants ;  and  the  terra  applied  to  them 


DISSERTATION  ON  SERVA2JTS.  481 

of  "  Men  of  the  Gulf,"  is  a  sure  recommendation  of  char 
acter  for  unlimited  trust  and  unwearying  zeal. 

Tlie  mode  of  providing  for  the  future  comforts  of  their 
maidens  is  a  little  incident  in  the  history  of  benevolence, 
which  we  must  regret  is  only  practised  in ,  such  limited 
communities.  Malte-Brun,  in  his  "Annales  des  Voy- 
ages," has  painted  a  scene  of  tliis  nature,  which  may 
read  like  some  romance  of  real  life.  The  girls,  after  a 
service  of  ten  years,  on  one  great  holiday,  an  epoch  in 
their  lives,  receive  the  ample  reward  of  their  good  conduct. 
On  that  happy  day  the  mistress  and  all  the  friends  of 
the  family  prepare  for  the  maiden  a  sort  of  dowry  or 
marriage-portion.  Every  friend  of  the  house  sends  some 
article  ;  and  the  mistress  notes  down  the  gifts,  that  she 
may  return  the  same  on  a  similar  occasion.  The  dona- 
tions consist  of  silver,  of  gowns,  of  handkerchiefs,  and 
other  useful  articles  for  a  young  woman.  These  tributes 
of  friendship  are  placed  beside  a  silver  basin,  which  con- 
tains the  annual  wages  of  the  servant ;  her  relatives  from 
the  coimtry  come,  accompanied  by  music,  carrying  bas- 
kets covered  with  ribbons  and  loaded  with  fruits,  and 
other  rural  delicacies.  They  are  received  by  the  master 
himself,  who  invites  them  to  the  feast,  where  the  com- 
pany assemble,  and  particularly  the  ladies.  All  the  pres- 
ents are  reviewed.  The  servant  introduced  kneels  to 
receive  the  benediction  of  her  mistress,  whose  grateful 
task  is  then  to  deliver  a  solemn  enumeration  of  her  good 
qualities,  concluding  by  announcing  to  the  maiden  that, 
having  been  brought  up  in  the  house,  if  it  be  her  choice 
to  remain,  from  henceforward  she  shall  be  considered  as 
one  of  the  family.  Tears  of  affection  often  fall  during 
this  beautiful  scene  of  true  domesticity,  which  terminates 
with  a  ball  for  the  servants,  and  another  for  the  supe- 
riors. The  relatives  of  the  maiden  return  homewards 
with  their  joyous  musicians  ;  and,  if  the  maiden  prefers 
her  old  domestic  abode,  she  receives  an  increase  of  wages, 
31 


4:82  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

and  at  a  succeeding  period  of  six  years  another  jubilee 
provides  her  second  good  fortune.  Let  me  tell  one  more 
story  of  the  influence  of  this  passion  of  domesticity  in  the 
servant ; — its  merit  equals  its  novelty.  In  that  inglori- 
ous attack  on  Buenos  Ayrcs,  where  our  brave  soldiers 
were  disgraced  by  a  recreant  general,  the  negroes,  slaves 
as  they  were,  joined  the  inhabitants  to  expel  the  inva- 
dei'S.  On  this  signal  occasion  the  city  decreed  a  public 
expression  of  their  gratitude  to  the  negroes,  in  a  sort  of 
triumph,  and  at  the  same  time  awarded  the  freedom  of 
eighty  of  their  leaders.  One  of  them,  having  shown  his 
claims  to  the  boon,  declared,  that  to  obtain  his  freedom 
had  all  his  days  formed  the  proud  object  of  his  mshes : 
his  claim  was  indisputable ;  yet  now,  however,  to  the 
amazement  of  the  judges,  he  refused  his  proflcred  free- 
dom !  The  reason  lie  alleged  was  a  singular  refinement 
of  heartfelt  sensibility : — "  My  kind  mistress,"  said  the 
negro,  "  once  Avealtliy,  has  fallen  into  misfortunes  in  her 
infirm  old  age.  I  work  to  maintain  her,  and  at  intervals 
of  leisure  she  leans  on  my  arm  to  take  the  evening  air. 
I  will  not  be  tempted  to  abandon  her,  and  I  renounce  the 
hope  of  freedom  that  she  may  know  she  possesses  a  slave 
who  never  will  quit  her  side." 

Although  I  have  been  travelling  out  of  Europe  to  fur 
nish  some  striking  illustrations  of  the  powerful  emotiob 
of  domesticity,  it  is  not  that  we  are  without  instances  in 
the  private  history  of  families  among  ourselves.  I  have 
known  more  than  one  where  the  servant  has  chosen  to 
live  without  wages,  rather  tlian  quit  the  master  or  the 
mistress  in  their  decayed  fortunes;  and  another  Avhere 
the  servant  cheerfully  worked  to  support  her  old  lady  to 
her  last  day. 

Would  we  look  on  a  very  opposite  mode  of  servitude, 
turn  to  the  United  States.  No  system  of  servitude  was 
ever  so  preposterous.  A  crude  notion  of  popular  free- 
dom in  the  equality  of  ranks  abolished  the  very  designa- 


DISSERTATION    ON  SERVANTS.  483 

tion  of  "servant,"  substituting  the  fantastic  term  of 
"  helps."  If  there  be  any  meaning  left  in  this  barbarous 
neologism,  their  aid  amounts  to  little ;  their  engagements 
are  made  by  the  week,  and  they  often  quit  their  domicile 
without  the  slightest  intimation. 

Let  none,  in  the  plenitude  of  pride  and  egotism, 
imagine  that  they  exist  independent  of  the  virtues  of 
their  domestics.  The  good  conduct  of  the  servant 
stamps  a  character  on  the  master.  In  the  sphere  of 
domestic  life  they  must  frequently  come  in  contact  with 
them.  On  this  subordinate  class,  how  much  the  happi- 
ness and  even  the  welfare  of  the  master  may  rest !  The 
gentle  offices  of  servitude  began  in  his  cradle,  and  await 
him  at  all  seasons  and  in  all  spots,  in  jileasure  or  in  peril. 
Feelingly  observes  Sir  Walter  Scott — "  In  a  free  country 
an  individual's  happiness  is  moi:e  immediately  connected 
with  the  personal  character  of  his  valet,  than  w^ith  that 
of  the  monarch  himself."  Let  the  reflection  not  be 
deemed  extravagant  if  I  venture  to  add,  that  the  habit- 
ual obedience  of  a  devoted  servant  is  a  more  immediate 
source  of  personal  comfort  than  even  the  delightfulness 
of  friendship  and  the  tenderness  of  relatives — for  these 
are  but  periodical ;  but  the  unbidden  zeal  of  the  domes- 
tic, intimate  with  our  habits,  and  patient  of  our  way- 
wardness, labours  for  us  at  all  hours.  It  is  those  feet 
which  hasten  to  us  in  our  solitude ;  it  is  those  hands 
which  silently  administer  to  our  wants.  At  what  jDcriod 
of  life  are  even  the  great  exempt  from  the  gentle  offices 
of  servitude  ? 

Faithful  servants  have  never  been  commemorated  by 
more  heartfelt  affection  than  by  those  whose  pursuits  re- 
quire a  perfect  freedom  from  domestic  cares.  Persons  of 
sedentary  occupations,  and  undisturbed  habits,  abstracted 
from  the  daily  business  of  life,  must  yield  unlimited  trust 
to  the  honesty,  while  they  want  the  hourly  attentions 
and  all  the  cheerful  zeal,  of   the  thoughtful  domestic. 


484  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

The  mutual  affections  of  the  master  and  the  servant  have 
often  been  exalted  into  a  companionship  of  feelings. 

When  Madame  de  Genlis  heard  that  Pope  had  raised 
a  monument  not  only  to  his  father  and  to  his  mother,  but 
also  to  the  faithful  servant  who  had  nursed  his  earliest 
years,  she  was  so  suddenly  struck  by  the  fact,  that  she 
declared  that  "  This  monument  of  gratitude  is  the  more 
remarkable  for  its  singularity,  as  I  know  of  no  other  in- 
stance." Our  churchyards  would  have  afforded  her  a 
vast  number  of  tomb-stones  erected  by  grateful  masters 
to  faithful  servants;"*  and  a  closer  intimacy  with  the 
domestic  privacy  of  many  public  characters  might  have 
displayed  the  same  splendid  examples.  The  one  Avhich. 
appears  to  have  so  strongly  affected  her  may  be  found 
on  the  east  end  of  the  outside  of  the  parish  church  of 
Twickenham.     The  stone  bears  this  inscription : — 

To  the  memory  of 

Mary  Beach, 

who  died  November  5,  1725,  aged  t8. 

Alexander  Pope, 

whom  she  nursed  in  his  infancy, 

and  constantly  attended  for  thirty-eight  years, 

Erected  this  stone 

In  gratitude  to  a  faithful  Servant. 

The  original  portrait  of  Shenstone  was  the  votive  gift 
of  a  master  to  his  servant,  for,  on  its  back,  written  by 
the  poet's  own  hand,  is  the  following  dedication : — "  This 
picture  belongs  to  Mary  Cutler,  given  her  by  her  master, 
William  Shenstone,  January  1st,  1754,  in  acknowledgment 
of  her  native  genius,  her  magnanimity,  her  tenderness,  and 
her  fidelity. — W.  S."  We  might  refer  to  many  similar 
evidences  of  the  domestic  gratitude  of  such  masters  to 
old  and  attaclicd  servants.  Some  of  these  tributes  may 
be  familiar  to  most  readers.     The  solemn  author  of  the 

*  Even  our  modorn  cemotorios  perpetuate  this  feeling,  and  exliibit 
many  grateful  Epitaphs  on  Servants. 


DISSERTATION  ON  SERVANTS.  485 

"Night  Thoughts "  inscribed  an  epitaph  over  the  grave 
of  his  man-servant ;  the  caustic  GiiFord  poured  forth  an 
effusion  to  the  memory  of  a  female  servant,  fraught  with 
a  melancholy  teudei-ness  which  his  muse  rarely  indulged. 
The  most  pathetic,  we  had  nearly  said,  and  had  said 
justly,  the  most  sublime,  development  of  this  devotion 
of  a  master  to  his  servant,  is  a  letter  addressed  by  that 
powerful  genius  Michael  Angelo  to  his  friend  Vasari,  on 
the  death  of  Urbino,  an  old  and  beloved  servant.*  Pub- 
lished only  in  the  voluminous  collection  of  the  letters  of 
Painters,  by  Bottari,  it  seems  to  have  escaped  general 
notice.  We  venture  to  translate  it  in  despair :  for  we 
feel  that  we  must  weaken  its  masculine  yet  tender  elo- 
quence. 

MICHAEL   AXGELO   TO   TASAEl. 

"  My  dear  George, — I  can  but  write  ill,  yet  shall  not 
your  letter  remain  without  my  saying  something.  You 
know  how  Urbino  has  died.  Great  was  the  grace  of  God 
when  he  bestowed  on  me  this  man,  though  now  heavy 
be  the  grievance  and  infinite  the  grief.  The  grace  was 
that  when  he  lived  he  kept  me  living  ;  and  in  dying  he 
has  taught  me  to  die,  not  in  sorrow  and  with  regret,  but 
with  a  fervent  desire  of  death.  Twenty  and  six  years 
had  he  served  me,  and  I  found  him  a  most  rare  and  faith- 
ful man ;  and  now  that  I  had  made  him  rich,  and  ex- 
pected to  lean  on  him  as  the  staff  and  the  repose  of  my 
old  age,  he  is  taken  from  me,  and  no  other  hope  remains 
than  that  of  seeing  him  again  in  Paradise.     A  sign  of 

*It  is  delightful  to  note  the  warm  affection  displayed  by  the  great 
eculptor  toward  his  old  servant  on  his  death-bed.  The  man  who 
would  beard  princes  and  tlie  pope  himself,  when  he  felt  it  necessary  to 
assert  his  independent  character  as  an  artist,  and  through  life  evinced 
a  somewhat  hard  exterior,  was  soft  as  a,  child  in  affectionate  attention 
to  his  dying  domestic,  anticipating  all  his  wants  by  a  personal  attend- 
ance at  his  bedside.  This  was  no  light  service  on  the  part  of  Michael 
Angelo,  who  was  himself  at  the  time  eighty-two  years  of  age. — Ed. 


486  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

God  was  this  happy  fleatli  to  him ;  yet,  even  more  than 
this  death,  were  his  regrets  increased  to  leave  me  in  this 
workl  the  wretch  of  many  anxieties,  since  the  better  half 
of  myself  has  departed  with  him,  and  nothing  is  left  for 
me  than  this  loneliness  of  life." 

Even  the  throne  has  not  been  too  far  removed  from 
this  sphere  of  humble  humanity,  for  we  discover  in  St. 
George's  Chapel  a  mural  monument  erected  by  order 
of  one  of  our  late  sovereigns  as  the  memorial  of  a  female 
servant  of  a  favourite  daughter.  The  inscription  is  a 
tribute  of  domestic  affection  in  a  royal  bosom,  where  an 
attached  servant  became  a  cherished  inmate. 

King  George  Til. 

Caused  to  be  interred  near  this  place  the  body  of 

Mary  Gascoigxe, 

Servant  to  the  Princess  Amelia ; 

and  this  stone 

to  be  inscribed  in  testimony  of  his  grateful  sense 

of  the  faithful  services  and  attachment 

of  an  amiable  young  woman  to 

his  beloved  Daughter. 

This  deep  emotion  for  the  tender  offices  of  servitude  is 
not  peculiar  to  the  refinement  of  our  manners,  or  to 
modern  Europe;  it  is  not  the  charity  of  Christianity 
alone  which  has  hallowed  this  sensibility,  and.  confessed 
this  equality  of  affection,  which  the  domestic  may  par- 
ticipate :  monumental  inscriptions,  raised  by  grateful 
masters  to  the  merits  of  tlieir  slaves,  have  been  preserved 
in  the  great  collections  of  Grajvius  and  Gruter.* 

*  There  arc  several  instances  of  Roman  heads  of  houses  who  con- 
secrate "to  themselves  and  their  servants"  the  sepulchres  they  erect 
in  their  own  lifetime,  as  if  in  deatli  they  had  no  desire  to  bo  divided 
from  those  who  had  served  them  faithfully.  An  instance  of  affection- 
ate regard  to  the  memory  of  a  deceased  servant  occurs  in  the  collec- 
tion at  Nismes;  it  is  an  inscription  by  one  Sextus  Arius  Varcis,  to 
Hermes,  "liis  best  servant"  (servo  optimo).  Fabretti  has  preserved 
an  inscription  which  records  the  death  of  a  child,  T.  Alfacius  .Scanti- 


LETTERS  IN  THE  VERNACULAR  IDIOM.  4,87 


PRINTED    LETTERS    IN    THE   VERNACULAR 
IDIOM, 

Prustted  Letters,  without  any  attention  to  the  selec- 
tion, is  so  gi'eat  a  literary  evil,  that  it  has  excited  my  curi- 
osity to  detect  the  first  modern  who  obtruded  such  formless 
things  on  public  attention.  I  conjectured  that,  whoever 
he  misrht  be,  he  would  be  distinguished  for  his  egotism 
and  his  knavery.  My  hypothetical  criticism  turned  out  to 
be  correct.  Nothing  less  than  the  audacity  of  the  unblush- 
ing Piero  Aretino  could  have  adventured  on  this  pro- 
ject ;  he  claims  the  honour,  and  the  critics  do  not  deny  it, 
of  being  the  first  v\dio  published  Italian  letters.  Aretino 
had  the  hardiliood  to  dedicate  one  volume  of  his  letters  to 
the  King  of  England,  another  to  the  Duke  of  Florence ;  a 
third  to  Hercules  of  Este,  a  relative  of  Pope  Julius  Third 
— evidently  insinuating  that  his  letters  were  worthy  to 
be  read  by  the  royal  and  the  noble. 

Among  these  letters  there  is  one  addressed  to  Mary, 
Queen  of  England,  on  her  resuscitation  of  the  ancient 
faith,  which  offers  a  very  extraordinary  catalogue  of  the 
ritual  and  ceremonies  of  the  Romish  church.  It  is  in- 
deed impossible  to  translate  into  Protestant  English  the 
multiplied  nomenclature  of  ofiices  which  involve  human 
life  in  never-ceasing  service.  As  I  know  not  where  we 
can  find  so  clear  a  perspective  of  this  amazing  contri- 
vance to  fetter  with  religious  ceremonies  the  freedom  of 
the  human  mind,  I  present  the  reader  with  an  accurate 
translation  of  it : — 


anius,  by  one  Alfacius  Severus,  his  master,  by  which  it  appears  he 
was  the  child  of  an  old  servant,  who  was  honoured  by  bearing  the 
prenomen  of  the  master,  and  who  is  also  stjded  in  the  epitaph  "  his 
sweetest  freedman  "  (liberto  dulcissimo). — Ed. 


488  LITERARY  CHARACTER. 

"  Pietro  Aretino  to  the  Queen  of  England. 

"The  voices  of  Psalms,  the  sound  of  Canticles,  the 
breath  of  Epistles  and  the  Spirit  of  Gospels,  had  need 
unloose  the  language  of  my  words  in  congratulating 
your  superhuman  Majesty  on  having  not  only  restored 
conscience  to  the  minds  and  hearts  of  Englishmen  and 
taken  deceitful  heresy  away  from  them,  but  on  bringing 
it  to  pass,  when  it  was  least  hoped  for,  that  charity  and 
faith  were  again  born  and  raised  uj)  in  them ;  on  which 
sudden  conversion  triumphs  our  sovereign  Pontiff  Julius, 
the  College,  and  the  whole  of  the  clergy,  so  that  it  seems 
in  Rome  as  if  the  shades  of  the  old  Ca3sars  with  visible 
effect  showed  it  in  their  A^ery  statues;  meanwhile  the 
pure  mind  of  his  most  blessed  Holiness  canonizes  you, 
and  marks  you  in  the  catalogue  among  the  Catharines 
and  Margarets,  and  dedicates  you,"  &c. 

"  The  stupor  of  so  stupendous  a  miracle  is  not  the 
stupefaction  of  stupid  wonder;  and  all  proceeds  from 
your  being  in  the  grace  of  God  in  every  deed,  whose 
incomprehensible  goodness  is  pleased  with  seeing  you, 
in  holiness  of  life  and  innocence  of  heart,  cause  to  be 
restored  in  those  proud  countries,  solemnity  to  Easters, 
abstinence  to  Lents,  sobriety  to  Fridays,  parsimony  to 
Saturdays,  fulfilment  to  vows,  fasts  to  vigils,  observances 
to  seasons,  chrism  to  creatures,  unction  to  the  dymg, 
festivals  to  saints,  images  to  churches,  masses  to  altars, 
lights  to  lamps,  organs  to  quires,  benedictions  to  olives, 
robings  to  sacristies,  and  decencies  to  baptisms ;  and 
that  nothing  may  be  wanting  (thanks  to  your  pious  and 
most  entire  nature),  possession  has  been  regained  to 
offices,  of  hours ;  to  ceremonies,  of  incense ;  to  reliques, 
of  shrines ;  to  the  confeysed,  of  absolutions  ;  to  priests,  of 
liabits ;  to  preachers,  of  pulpits  ;  to  ecclesiastics,  of  pi-e- 
eminences ;  to  scriptures,  of  interpreters ;  to  hosts,  of 
communions ;  to  the  poor,  of  alms ;  to  the  wretched,  of 


LETTERS  IN  THE  VERNACULAR  IDIOM.  489 

hospitals ;  to  virgins,  of  monasteries ;  to  fathers,  of  eon- 
vents  ;  to  the  clergy,  of  orders  ;  to  the  defunct,  of  obse- 
quies ;  to  tierces,  noons,  vespers,  complins,  ave-raaries, 
and  matins,  the  privileges  of  daily  and  nightly  bells." 

The  fortunate  temerity  of  Aretino  gave  birth  to  sub- 
sequent publications  by  more  skilful  writers.  Nicolo 
Franco  closely  followed,  who  had  at  first  been  the  aman- 
uensis of  Aretino,  then  his  rival,  and  concluded  his  liter- 
ary adventures  by  being  hanged  at  Rome ;  a  circum- 
stance which  at  the  time  must  have  occasioned  regret 
that  Franco  had  not,  in  this  respect  also,  been  an  imita- 
tor of  his  original,  a  man  equally  feared,  flattered,  and 
despised. 

The  greatest  personages  and  the  most  esteemed  writers 
of  that  age  were  perhaps  pleased  to  have  discovered  a 
new  and  easy  path  to  fame ;  and  since  it  was  ascertained 
that  a  man  might  become  celebrated  by  writings  nevei 
intended  for  the  press,  and  which  it  was  never  imagined 
could  confer  fame  on  the  writers,  volumes  succeeded 
volumes,  and  some  authors  are  scarcely  known  to  pos- 
terity but  as  letter-writers.  We  have  the  too-elaborate 
epistles  of  Bembo,  secretary  to  Leo  X.,  and  the  more 
elegant  correspondence  of  Annibal  Caro  ;  a  work  which, 
though  posthumous,  and  published  by  an  affectionate 
nephew,  and  therefoi'e  too  undiscerning  a  jjublisher,  is  a 
model  of  familiar  letters. 

These  collections,  being  fovmd  agreeable  to  the  taste 
of  their  readers,  novelty  was  courted  by  composing  let- 
ters more  expressly  adapted  to  public  curiosity.  The 
subjects  were  now  diversified  by  critical  and  political 
topics,  till  at  length  they  descended  to  one  more  level 
with  the  faculties,  and  more  grateful  to  the  passions  of 
the  populace  of  readers — Love!  Many  grave  person- 
ages had  already,  without  being  sensible  of  the  ridicu- 
lous, languished  through  tedious  odes  and  starch  sonnets. 
Doni,  a  bold  literary  projector,  who  invented  a  literary 


490  LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

review  both  of  printed  and  mannscrij)t  works,  with  not 
inferior  ingenuity,  published  his  love-letters  y  and  with  the 
felicity  of  an  Italian  diminutive,  he  fondly  entitled  them 
"Pistolette  Amorose  del  Doni,"  1552,  8vo.  These  Pis- 
tole were  designed  to  be  little  epistles,  or  billets-doux 
but  Doni  was  one  of  those  fertile  authors  who  have  too 
little  time  of  their  own  to  compose  short  works.  Doni 
was  too  facetious  to  be  sentimental,  and  his  quill  was  not 
plucked  from  the  wing  of  Love.  He  was  followed  by  a 
graver  pedant,  who  threw  a  heavy  offering  on  the  altar 
of  the  Graces  ;  Parabosco,  who  in  six  books  of  "  Lettere 
Amorose,"  1565,  8vo,  was  too  j)hlegmatic  to  sigh  over  his 
inkstand. 

Denina  mentions  Lewis  Pasqualigo  of  Venice  as  an 
improver  of  these  amatory  epistles,  by  introducing  a 
decider  interest  and  a  more  complicate  narrative.  Par- 
tial to  the  Italian  literature,  Denina  considers  this  author 
as  having  sriven  birth  to  those  novels  in  the  form  of  let- 
ters^  with  which  modern  Europe  has  been  inundated; 
and  he  refers  the  curious  in  literary  researches,  for  the 
precursors  of  these  epistolary  novels^  to  the  works 
of  those  Italian  wits  who  flourished  in  the  sixteenth 
century. 

"  The  Worlds  "  of  Doni,  and  the  numerous  whimsical 
works  of  Ortensio  Landi,  and  the  "  Circe "  of  Gelli,  of 
which  we  have  more  than  one  English  translation,  which, 
under  their  fantastic  inventions,  cover  the  most  profound 
philosophical  views,  have  been  considered  the  precursors 
of  the  finer  genius  of  "  The  Persian  Letters,"  that  fertile 
mother  of  a  numerous  i)rogeny,  of  D'Argens  and  others. 

The  Italians  are  justly  proud  of  some  valuable  collec- 
tions of  letters,  which  seem  peculiar  to  themselves,  and 
which  may  be  considered  as  the  works  of  artists.  They 
have  a  collection  of  "  Lettere  di  Trcdici  Uomini  Illustri," 
which  appeared  in  1571;  another  more  curious,  relating 
to  princes — "  Lettci-e  de'  Principi  le  quali  o  si  sciivono 


LETTERS   IN   THE   VERNACULAR   IDIOil.  49I 

da  Principi  a  Princi])!,  o  ragionano  di  Principi ;"  Yenezia, 
1581,  in  3  vols,  quarto. 

Biit  a  treasure  of  this  kind,  peculiarly  interesting  to 
the  artist,  has  appeared  in  more  recent  times,  in  seven 
quarto  volumes,  consisting  of  the  original  letters  of  the 
great  painters,  from  the  golden  age  of  Leo  X.,  gradually- 
collected  by  Bottari,  who  published  them  in  separate 
volumes.  They  abound  in  the  most  interesting  facts  rela- 
tive to  the  arts,  and  display  the  characteristic  traits  of 
their  lively  writers.  Every  ai'tist  will  turn  over  with 
delight  and  curiosity  these  genuine  effusions  ;  chronicles 
of  the  days  and  the  nights  of  their  vivacious  brothers. 

It  is  a  little  remarkable  that  he  who  claims  to  be  the 
first  satirist  in  the  English  language,  claims  also,  more 
justly  perhaps,  the  honour  of  being  the  first  author  who 
published  familiar  letters.  In  the  dedication  of  his 
Epistles  to  Prince  Henry,  the  son  of  James  the  First, 
Bishop  Hall  claims  the  honour  of  introducing  "  this  new 
fashion  of  discourse  by  epistles,  new  to  our  language, 
usual  to  others ;  and  as  novelty  is  never  without  plea  of 
use,  more  free,  more  familiar."  Of  these  epistles,  in  six 
decades,  many  were  written  during  his  travels.  We  have 
a  collection  of  Donne's  letters  abounding  with  his  pecu- 
liar points,  at  least  witty,  if  not  natural. 

As  wo  became  a  literary  nation,  familiar  letters  served 
as  a  vehicle  for  the  fresh  feelings  of  our  first  authors. 
Howell,  whose  Epistolae  bears  his  name,  takes  a  wider 
circumference  in  "  Familiar  Letters,  domestic  and  foreign, 
historical,  political,  and  philosophical,  upon  emergent  oc- 
casions." The  "  emergent  occasions "  the  lively  writer 
found  in  his  lono;  confinement  in  the  Fleet — that  Ensflish 
Parnassus  !  Howell  is  a  wit,  who,  in  writing  his  own 
history,  has  written  that  of  his  times ;  he  is  one  of  the 
few  whose  genius,  striking  in  the  heat  of  the  moment 
only  current  coin,  produces  finished  medals  for  the  cabi- 
net.    His  letters  are  still  published.      The  taste  which 


492  •       LITERARY   CHARACTER. 

had  now  arisen  for  collecting  letters,  induced  Sir  Tobie 
Mathews,  in  1660,  to  form  a  volume,  of  which  many,  if 
not  all,  are  genuine  productions  of  their  different  wri- 
ters. 

The  dissipated  elegance  of  Charles  11.  inspired  freedom 
in  letter-writing.  The  royal  emigrant  had  caught  the 
tone  of  Voiture.  We  have  some  few  letters  of  the  wits 
of  this  court,  but  that  school  of  writers,  having  sinned 
in  gross  materialism,  the  reaction  produced  another  of  a 
more  spiritual  nature,  in  a  romantic  strain  of  the  most 
refined  sentiment.  Volumes  succeeded  volumes  from 
pastoral  and  heroic  minds.  Katherine  Philij^s,  in  the 
masquerade-dress  of  "  The  Matchless  Orinda,"  addressed 
Sir  Charles  Cottrel,  her  grave  "  Poliarchus ;"  while  Mrs. 
Behn,  in  her  loose  dress,  assuming  the  nymph-like  form  of 
"  Astrtea,"  pursued  a  gentleman,  concealed  in  a  domino, 
under  the  name  of  "  Lycidas." 

Before  our  letters  i*eached  to  nature  and  truth,  they 
were  strained  by  one  more  effort  after  novelty ;  a  new 
species  appeared,  "  From  the  Dead  to  the  Living,"  by 
Mrs.  Rowe :  they  obtained  celebrity.  She  was  the  first 
who,  to  gratify  the  public  taste,  adventured  beyond  the 
Styx ;  the  caprice  of  public  favour  has  returned  them  to 
the  place  whence  they  came. 

The  letters  of  Pope  were  unquestionably  written  for 
the  pubhc  eye.  Partly  accident,  and  partly  jiersevering 
ingenuity,  extracted  from  the  family  chests  the  letters  of 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montague,  who  long  remained  the 
model  of  letter-writing.  The  letters  of  Hughes  and 
Shenstone,  of  Gray,  Cowper,  Walpole,  and  others,  self- 
painters,  whose  indelible  colours  have  given  an  imperish- 
al:>lc  charm  to  these  fragments  of  the  human  mind,  may 
close  our  subject ;  printed  familiir  letters  now  enter  into 
the  history  of  our  literature. 


AN    INQUIRY 


LITERARY  AXD  POLITICAL  CHARACTER  OF 
JAMES  THE  FIRST; 

INCLUDING  A   SKETCH   OF   HIS   AGE. 


"  The  whole  reign  of  James  I.  has  been  represented  by  a  late  cele- 
brated pen  (Burnet)  to  have  been  a  continued  course^f  mean  practices ; 
and  others,  wlio  have  professedly  given  an  account  of  it,  have  filled 
their  works  with  libel  and  invective,  instead  of  history.  Both  King 
James  and  his  ministers  have  met  with  a  treatment  from  posterity 
higlily  unworthy  of  them,  and  those  who  have  so  liberally  bestowed 
their  censures  were  entirely  ignorant  of  the  true  springs  and  causes  of 
the  actions  they  have  undertaken  to  represent." — Sawyer's  Preface  to 
"  Winwood's  Memorials." 

"  II  y  auroit  un  excellent  livre  a  faire  sur  les  injustices,  les  Oublis, 
et  les  OALOMNiES  niSTORiQUES." — Madame  db  Genlis. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


The  present  inquiry  originates  in  an  affair  of  literary 
conscience.  Many  years  ago  I  set  off  in  tlie  world  with 
the  popular  notions  of  the  character  of  James  the  First ; 
but  in  the  course  of  study,  and  with  a  more  enlarged 
comprehension  of  the  age,  I  Avas  frequently  struck  by  the 
contrast  of  his  real  with  his  apparent  character ;  and  I 
thought  I  had  developed  those  hidden  and  involved 
causes  which  have  so  long  influenced  modern  writers  in 
ridiculing  and  vilifying  this  monarch. 

This  historical  trifle  is,  therefore,  neither  a  hasty  deci- 
sion, nor  a  designed  inquiry  ;  the  results  gradually  arose 
through  successive  periods  of  time,  and,  were  it  worth 
the  while,  the  history  of  my  thoughts,  in  my  own  pub- 
lications, might  be  arranged  in  a  sort  of  chronological 
conviction.* 

It  would  be  a  cowardly  silence  to  shrink  from  encoun- 
tering all  that  popular  prejudice  and  party  feeling  may 
oppose ;  this  were  mcompatible  with  that  constant  search 
after  truth  which  we  may  at  least  expect  from  the  retired 
student. 

I  had  originally  limited  this  inquiry  to  the  literary 
character  of  the  monarch  ;  but  there  was  a  secret  con- 
nexion between  that  and  his  political  conduct ;  and  that 
again  led  me  to  examine  the  manners  and  temper  of  the 
times,  with  the  eftects  which  a  peace  of  more  than  twenty 
years  operated  on  the  nation.  I  hope  that  the  freshness 
of  the  materials,  often  drawn  from  contemporary  wi'itings 

*I  havo  described  the  progress  of  my  opinions  in  "Curiosities  of  Literature," 
vol.  i.,  p.  4GT,  l:ist  edition. 


496  ADVERTISEMENT. 

which  have  never  been  published,  may  in  some  respect 
gratify  curiosity.  Of  the  political  character  of  James  the 
First  opposite  tempers  will  form  opposite  opmions ;  the 
friends  of  peace  and  humanity  will  consider  that  the 
greatest  haj)piness  of  the  people  is  that  of  possessing  a 
philosopher  on  the  throne ;  let  profounder  mquirers  here- 
after discover  why  those  princes  are  suspected  of  being 
but  weak  men,  who  are  the  true  fathers  of  their  people  ; 
let  them  too  inform  us,  whether  we  are  to  ascribe  to 
James  the  First,  as  well  as  to  Marcus  Antoninus,  the 
disorders  of  their  reign,  or  place  them  to  the  ingratitude 
and  wantonness  of  mankind. 


M  INQUIRY 


INTO  THB 


LITERARY  AND  POLITICAL  CHARACTER  OF 
JAMES  THE  FIRST; 

mCLUDING  A  SKETCH  OF  HIS  AGE. 


If  sometimes  the  learned  entertain  false  opinions  and 
traditionary  prejudices,  as  well  as  the  people,  they  how- 
ever preserve  among  themselves  a  paramount  love  of 
truth,  and  the  means  to  remove  errors,  which  have  es- 
caped their  scrutiny.  The  occasion  of  such  errors  may 
be  complicate,  but,  usually,  it  is  the  arts  and  passions  of 
the  few  which  find  an  indolent  acquiescence  among  the 
many,  and  firm  adherents  among  those  who  so  eagerly 
consent  to  what  they  do  not  dislike  to  hear. 

A  remarkable  instance  of  this  appears  in  the  character 
of  James  the  First,  which  lies  buried  under  a  heap  of 
ridicule  and  obloquy ;  yet  James  the  First  was  a  literary 
monarch  at  one  of  the  great  eras  of  English  literature, 
and  his  contemporaries  were  far  from  suspecting  that  his 
talents  were  inconsiderable,  even  among  those  who  had 
their  reasons  not  to  like  him.  The  degradation  which 
his  literary  character  has  suffered  has  been  inflicted  by 
more  recent  hands ;  and  it  may  startle  the  last  echoer  of 
Pope's  "  Pedant-reign  "  to  hear  that  more  wit  and  wisdom 
have  been  recorded  of  James  the  First  than  of  any  one 
of  our  sovereigns. 
32 


498  CHARACTER  OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

An  "  Author-Sovereign,"  as  Lord  Shaftesbury,  in  his 
anomalous  but  emphatic  style,  terms  this  class  of  writers, 
is  placed  between  a  double  eminence  of  honours,  and 
must  incur  the  double  perils ;  he  Avill  receive  no  favour 
from  his  brothers,  the  F'aineants^  as  a  whole  race  of 
ciphers  in  sxiccession  on  the  throne  of  France  were  de- 
nominated, and  who  find  it  much  more  easy  to  despise 
than  to  acquire ;  while  his  other  brothers,  the  republicans 
of  literature,  want  a  heart  to  admire  the  man  who  has 
resisted  the  perpetual  seductions  of  a  court-life  for  the 
silent  labours  of  his  closet.  Yet  if  Alphonsus  of  Arragon 
be  still  a  name  endeared  to  us  for  his  love  of  literature, 
and  for  that  elegant  testimony  of  his  devotion  to  study 
expressed  by  the  device  on  his  banner  of  an  open  book, 
how  much  more  ought  we  to  be  indulgent  to  the  memory 
of  a  sovereign  who  has  written  one  still  worthy  of  being 
opened  ? 

We  must  separate  the  literary  from  the  political  char- 
acter of  this  monarch,  and  the  qualities  of  his  mind  and 
temper  from  the  ungracious  and  neglected  manners  of 
his  personal  one.  And  if  we  do  not  take  a  more  familiar 
view  of  the  events,  the  parties,  and  the  genius  of  the 
times,  the  views  and  conduct  of  James  the  First  will 
still  remain  imperfectly  comprehended.  In  the  reign  of 
a  prince  who  was  no  military  character,  we  must  busy 
ourselves  at  home  ;  the  events  he  regulated  may  be  nu- 
merous and  even  interesting,  although  not  tliose  which 
make  so  much  noise  and  show  in  the  popular  page  of  his- 
tory, and  escape  us  in  its  general  views.  The  want  of 
this  sort  of  knowledge  has  proved  to  be  one  great  source 
of  the  false  judgments  passed  on  this  monarch.  Surely 
it  is  not  philosophical  to  decide  of  another  age  by  the 
changes  and  the  feelings  through  which  our  own  has 
passed.  There  is  a  chronology  of  human  opinions 
which,  not  observing,  an  indiscreet  philosopher  may 
commit  an  anachronism  in  reasouins^. 


FIRST  ASSAILANTS   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST.        490 

Wlien  the  Stuarts  became  the  objects  of  popular  in- 
dignation, a  peculiar  race  of  libels  was  eagerly  dragged 
into  light,  assuming  the  imposing  form  of  history ;  many 
of  these  state-libels  did  not  even  pass  through  the  press, 
and  may  occasionally  be  discovered  in  their  MS.  state. 
Yet  these  publications  cast  no  shade  on  the  talents  of 
James  the  First.  His  literary  attainments  were  yet  un- 
disputed ;  they  were  echoing  in  the  ear  of  the  writers, 
and  many  proofs  of  his  sagacity  were  still  lively  in  their 
recollections. 


THE    FIRST    MODERN    ASSAHLANTS    OF    THE 
CHARACTER  OF  JA3HES  THE  FIRST. 

Burnet,  the  ardent  champion  of  a  party  so  deeply  con- 
cerned to  oppose  as  well  the  persons  as  the  principles  of 
the  Stuarts,  levelled  the  father  of  the  race ;  we  read  with 
delight  pages  which  warm  and  hurry  us  on,  mingling 
truths  with  rumours,  and  known  with  suggested  events, 
with  all  the  spirit  of  secret  history.  But  the  character 
of  James  I.  was  to  pass  through  the  lengthened  inquisi- 
torial tortui'es  of  the  sullen  sectarianism  of  Harris.*     It 

♦  The  historical  works  of  Dr.  "William  Harris  have  been  recently 
republished  in  a  collected  form,  and  they  may  now  be  considered  as 
entering  into  our  historical  stores. 

Harris  is  a  curious  researcher ;  but  what  appears  more  striking  in 
his  historical  character,  is  the  impartiality  with  which  he  quotes 
authorities  which  make  against  his  own  opinions  and  statements. 
Yet  is  Harris  a  writer  likely  to  impose  on  many  readers.  He  an- 
nounces in  his  title-pages  that  hia  works  are  "  after  the  manner  of  Mr. 
Bayle."  This  is  but  a  literary  imposition,  for  Harris  is  perhaps  the 
meanest  vxTiter  in  our  language  both  for  style  and  philosophical  think- 
ing. The  extraordinary  impartiality  he  displays  in  his  faithful  quota- 
tions from  writers  on  opposite  sides  is  only  the  more  likely  to  deceive 
us ;  for  by  that  unalterable  party  feeling,  which  never  forsakes  him, 
the  facts  against  him  he  studiously  weakens  by  doubts,  surmises,  and 
suggestions ;  a  character  sinks  to  the  level  of  his  notions  by  a  single 


500  CHAEAOTER  OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

was  branded  by  the  fierce,  remorseless  republican,  Cath- 
arine Macaulay,  and  flouted  by  the  light,  sparkling 
Whig,  Horace  Walpole.*     A  senseless  cry  of  pedantry 

stroke ;  and  from  the  arguments  adverse  to  his  purpose,  he  wrests  the 
most  violent  inferences.  All  party  writers  must  submit  to  practise 
Buch  mean  and  disingenuous  arts  if  they  affect  to  dipguise  themselves 
under  a  cover  of  impartiality.  Bayle,  intent  on  collecting  facts,  was 
indifferent  to  their  results ;  but  Harris  is  more  intent  on  the  deductions 
than  the  facts.  The  truth  is,  Harris  wrote  to  please  his  patron,  the 
republican  Hollis,  who  supplied  him  with  books,  and  every  frit'odly 
aid.  "  It  is  possible  for  an  ingenious  man  to  be  of  a  party  without 
being  partial,''^  says  Rushworth ;  an  airy  clench  on  the  lips  of  a  sober 
matter-of-fact  man  looks  suspicious,  and  betrays  the  weak  pang  of  a 
half-conscience. 

*  Horace  Walpole's  character  of  James  I.,  in  his  "Royal  Authors," 
ia  as  remarkable  as  his  character  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney ;  he  might  have 
written  both  without  any  acquaintance  with  the  works  he  has  so 
maliciously  criticised.  In  liis  account  of  Sidney  he  had  silently  passed 
over  the  "Defence  of  P.i>'  ry;"  and  in  his  second  edition  he  makes 
this  insolent  avowal,  that  "he  had  forgotten  it ;  a  proof  that  I  at  least 
did  not  think  it  sufficient  foundation  for  so  high  a  character  as  he  ac- 
quired." Every  reader  of  taste  knows  the  falseness  of  the  criticism, 
and  how  heartless  the  polished  cynicism  that  could  dare  it.  I  repeat, 
what  I  have  elsewhere  said,  that  Horace  Walpole  had  something  in 
his  composition  more  predominant  than  his  wit,  a  cold,  unfeeling  dis- 
position, which  contemned  all  literary  men,  at  the  moment  his  heart 
■ecretly  panted  to  partake  of  their  fame. 

Nothing  can  bo  more  imposing  than  his  volatUe  and  caustic  criti- 
cisms on  the  works  of  James  L;  yet  it  appears  to  me  that  he  had 
never  opened  that  folio  volume  he  so  poignantly  ridicules.  For  he 
doubts  whether  these  two  pieces,  "The  Prince's  Cabala"  and  "The 
Duty  of  a  King  in  hia  Royal  Office,"  were  genuine  productions  of 
James  I.  The  truth  is,  they  are  both  nothing  more  than  extracts 
printed  with  those  separate  titles,  drawn  from  tlie  King's  "  Basilicon 
Doron."  He  had  probably  neither  read  the  extracts  nor  the  original. 
Thus  singularity  of  opinion,  vivacity  of  ridicule,  and  polished  epi- 
grams in  prose,  were  the  means  by  which  this  noble  writer  startled 
the  world  by  hia  paradoxes,  and  at  length  lived  to  be  mortified  at  a 
reputation  which  he  sported  with  and  lost.  I  refer  the  reader  to 
those  extracts  from  his  MS.  letters  which  are  in  "  Calamities  of  Au- 
thors," where  ho  has  made  his  literary  confessions,  and  performs  his 
act  of  penance. 


PEDANTRY  OP  JA3IES  THE  ilEST.  5ol 

had  been  raised  against  him  by  the  eloquent  invective  of 
Bolingbroke,  from  whom  doubtless  Pope  echoed  it  in 
verse  which  has  outlived  his  lordship's  prose : — 

Oh,  cried  the  goddess,  for  some  pedant  reign  I 
Some  geutle  James  to  bless  the  land  again ; 
To  stick  the  doctor's  chair  into  the  throne, 
Give  law  to  words,  or  war  with  words  alone, 
Senates  and  courts  with  Greek  and  Latin  rule, 
And  turn  the  council  to  a  grammar-school  1 

Dunciad,  book  iv.  ver.  175 


THE  PEDANTRY  OF  JAMES  THE  FHIST. 

Few  of  my  readers,  I  suspect,  but  have  long  been  per- 
suaded that  James  L  was  a  mere  college  pedant,  and 
that  all  his  works,  whatever  they  may  be,  are  monstrous 
pedantic  labours.  Yet  this  monarch  of  all  things  de- 
tested pedantry,  either  as  it  shows  itself  in  the  mere 
form  of  Greek  and  Latin,  or  in  ostentatious  book-learn- 
ing, or  in  the  aifectation  of  words  of  remote  signification : 
these  are  the  only  points  of  view  in  which  I  have  been 
taught  to  consider  the  meaning  of  the  term  pedantry, 
which  is  very  indefinite,  and  always  a  relative  one. 

The  age  of  James  I.  was  a  controversial  age,  of  un- 
settled opinions  and  contested  principles ;  an  age,  in 
which  authority  was  considered  as  stronger  than  opin- 
ion ;  but  the  vigour  of  that  age  of  genius  was  infused 
into  their  writings,  and  those  citers,  who  thus  perpet- 
ually crowded  their  margins,  were  profound  and  original 
thinkers.  When  the  learning  of  a  preceding  age  becomes 
less  recondite,  and  those  principles  general  which  were 
at  first  peculiar,  are  the  ungrateful  heirs  of  all  this 
knowledge  to  rejDroach  the  fathers  of  their  literature 
with  pedantry?  Lord  Bolingbroke  has  pointedly  said 
of  James  L  that  "  his  pedantry  was  too  much  even  for 


502  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

the  age  in  which  he  lived."  His  lordship  knew  little 
of  that  glorious  age  when  the  founders  of  our  literature 
flourished.  It  had  been  over-clouded  by  the  French 
court  of  Charles  II.,  a  race  of  unprincipled  wits,  and  the 
revolution-court  of  William,  heated  by  a  new  faction, 
too  impatient  to  discuss  those  principles  of  government 
which  they  had  established.  It  was  easy  to  ridicule 
what  they  did  not  always  understand,  and  very  rarely 
met  with.  But  men  of  far  higher  genius  than  this  mon- 
arch, Selden,  Usher,  and  Milton,  must  first  be  condemned 
before  this  odium  of  pedantry  can  attach  itself  to  the 
plain  and  unostentatious  writings  of  James  I.,  who,  it  is 
remarkable,  has  not  scattered  in  them  those  oratorical 
periods,  and  elaborate  fancies,  which  he  indulged  in  his 
speeches  and  proclamations.  These  loud  accusers  of  the 
pedantry  of  James  were  little  aware  that  the  king  has 
expressed  himself  with  energy  and  distinctness  on  thia 
very  topic.  His  majesty  cautions  Prince  Henry  against 
the  use  of  any  "  corrupt  leide,  as  hook-language,  and  pen- 
and-inkhorn  termes,  and,  least  of  all,  nignard  and  effemi- 
nate ones."  One  passage  may  be  given  entire  as  com- 
pletely refuting  a  charge  so  general,  yet  so  unfounded. 
"  I  would  also  advise  you  to  write  in  "  i/our  own  language^ 
for  there  is  nothing  left  to  he  said  in  Greek  and  Latine 
already  ;  and,  ynewe  (enough)  of  poore  schollers  would 
match  you  in  these  languages ;  and  besides  that  it  best 
becometh  a  King^  to  purifie  and  make  famous  his  owne 
tongue  /  therein  he  may  goe  before  all  his  subjects,  as  it 
setteth  him  well  to  doe  in  all  honest  and  lawful  things." 
No  scholar  of  a  pedantic  taste  could  have  dared  so  com- 
plete an  emancipation  from  ancient,  yet  not  obsolete  pre- 
judices, at  a  time  when  many  of  our  own  great  authors 
yet  imagined  there  was  no  fame  for  an  Englishman 
unless  he  neglected  his  maternal  language  for  the  arti- 
ficial labour  of  the  idiom  of  ancient  Rome.  Bacon  had 
even  his  own  domestic  Essays  translated  into  Latin ;  and 


HIS  POLEMICAL   STUDIES.  503 

the  king  found  a  courtier-bishop  to  perform  the  same 
task  for  his  majesty's  writings.  There  was  something 
prescient  in  this  view  of  the  national  language,  by  the 
king,  who  contemplated  in  it  those  latent  powers  which 
had  not  yet  burst  into  existence.  It  is  evident  that  the 
line  of  Pope  is  false  which  describes  the  king  as  intend- 
ing to  rule  "  senates  and  courts  "  by  "  turning  the  coun- 
cil to  a  grammar-school." 


fflS    POLEMICAL    STUDIES. 

This  censure  of  the  pedantry  of  James  is  also  con- 
nected with  those  studies  of  polemical  divinity,  for  which 
the  king  has  incurred  much  ridicule  from  one  party,  who 
were  not  his  contemporaries ;  and  such  vehement  invec- 
tive from  another,  who  were  ;  who,  to  their  utter  dis- 
may, discovered  their  monarch  descending  into  their 
theological  gymnasiimi  to  encounter  them  with  their 
own  weapons. 

The  affairs  of  religion  and  politics  in  the  reign  of 
James  I.,  as  in  the  preceding  one  of  Elizabeth,*  were  iden- 
tified together  ;  nor  yet  have  the  same  causes  in  Europe 
ceased  to  act,  however  changed  or  modified.  The  gov- 
ernment of  James  was  imperfectly  established  while  his 
subjects  were  wrestling  with  two  great  factions  to  ob- 
tain the  predominance.  The  Catholics  were  disputing 
his  title  to  the  crown,  which  they  aimed  to  carry  into 
the  family  of  Spain,  and  had  even  fixed  on  Arabella 
Stuart,  to  marry  her  to   a  Prince  of  Parma ;   and  the 

*  I  have  more  largely  entered  into  the  history  of  the  party  who  at- 
tempted to  subvert  the  government  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  and  who 
published  their  works  under  the  assumed  name  of  Martin  Mar-prelate, 
than  had  hitherto  been  done.  In  our  domestic  annals  that  event  and 
those  personages  are  of  some  importance  and  curiosity ;  but  were  im- 
perfectly known  to  the  popular  writers  of  our  history. — See  "  Quar- 
rels of  Authors,"  p.  296.  et  seq. 


504  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

Puritans  would  have  abolished  even  sovereignty  itself; 
these  parties  indeed  were  not  able  to  take  the  field,  but 
all  felt  equally  powerful  with  the  pen.  Hence  an  age  of 
doctrines.  When  a  religious  body  has  grown  into  pow- 
er, it  changes  itself  into  a  political  one ;  the  chiefs  are 
flattered  by  their  strength  and  stimulated  by  their  am 
bition ;  but  a  powerful  body  in  the  State  cannot  remain 
stationary,  and  a  divided  empire  it  disdains.  Religious 
controversies  have  therefore  been  usually  coverings  to 
mask  the  political  designs  of  the  heads  of  parties. 

We  smile  at  James  the  First  threatening  the  States- 
general  by  the  English  Ambassador  about  Vorstius,  a 
Dutch  professor,  who  had  espoused  the  doctrines  of  Ar- 
minius,  and  had  also  vented  some  metaphysical  notions 
of  his  own  respecting  the  occult  nature  of  the  Divinity. 
He  was  the  head  of  the  Remonstrants,  who  were  at  open 
war  with  the  party  called  the  Contra-Remonstrants. 
The  ostensible  subjects  were  religious  doctrines,  but  the 
concealed  one  was  a  struggle  between  Pensionary  Bar- 
nevelt,  aided  by  the  French  interest,  and  the  Prince  of 
Orange,  supported  by  the  English ;  even  to  our  own  days 
the  same  opposite  interests  existed,  and  betrayed  the 
Republic,  although  religious  doctrines  had  ceased  to  be 
the  pretext.* 

*  Pensionary  Barnevelt,  in  his  seventy-second  year,  was  at  length 
brought  to  the  block.  Diodati,  a  divine  of  Geneva,  made  a  miserable 
pun  on  the  occasion ;  he  said  that  "  the  Canons  of  the  Synod  of  Dort 
had  taken  off  the  head  of  the  advocate  of  Holland."  This  pun,  says 
Brandt  in  his  curious  "  History  of  the  Reformation,"  is  very  injurious 
to  the  Synod,  since  it  intimates  that  the  Churcli  loves  blood.  It  never 
entered  into  the  mind  of  these  divines  that  Barnevelt  fell,  not  by  the 
Synod,  but  by  the  Orange  and  English  party  prevailing  against  the 
French.  Lord  Hardwicke,  a  statesman  and  a  man  of  letters,  deeply 
conversant  with  secret  and  public  history,  is  a  more  able  judge  than 
the  ecclesiastical  historian  or  the  Sw^iss  divine,  who  could  see  nothing 
in  the  Synod  of  Dort  but  vrliat  appeared  in  it.  It  is  in  Lord  Hard- 
wiclic's  preface  to  Sir  Dudley  Carleton's  "Letters"  that  his  lordship 
has  made  this  important  discovery. 


Hia   POLEMICAL  STUDIES.  505 

What  was  passing  between  the  Dutch  Prince  and  the 
Dutch  Pensionary,  was  much  like  what  was  taking  place 
between  the  King  of  England  and  his  own  subjects. 
James  I.  had  to  touch  with  a  balancing  hand  the  Catho- 
lics and  the  Nonconformists,* — to  play  them  one  against 
another ;  but  there  was  a  distinct  end  in  their  views. 
"  James  I.,"  says  Burnet,  "  continued  always  writing  and 
talking  against  Popery,  but  acting  for  it."  The  King 
and  the  bishops  were  probably  more  tolerant  to  mon- 
archists and  prelatists,  than  to  republicans  and  presbyters. 
When  James  got  nothing  but  gunpowder  and  Jesuits 
from  Rome,  he  was  willing  enough  to  banish,  or  suppress, 
but  the  Catholic  families  were  ancient  and  numerous; 
and  the  most  determined  spirits  which  ever  subverted  a 
government  were   Catholic.f     Yet  what  could  the  King 

*  James  did  all  he  could  to  weaken  the  Catholic  party  by  dividing 
them  in  opinion.  When  Dr.  Reynolds,  the  head  of  the  Nonconform- 
ists, complained  to  the  king  of  the  printing  and  dispersing  of  Popish 
pamphlets,  the  king  answered  that  this  was  done  by  a  warrant  from 
the  Court,  to  nourish  the  schism  between  the  Seculars  and  Jesuits, 
which  was  of  great  service.  "Doctor,"  added  the  king,  "you  are  a 
better  clergyman  than  statesman." — Neale's  "  History  of  the  Puritans," 
vol.  i.,  p.  41G,  4to. 

f  The  character  and  demeanour  of  the  celebrated  Guy  or  Guido 
Fawkes,  who  appeared  first  before  the  council  under  the  assumed 
name  of  Johnson,  I  find  in  a  MS.  letter  of  the  times,  which  contains 
some  characteristic  touches  not  hitherto  published.  This  letter  is  from 
Sir  Edward  Hoby  to  Sir  Thomas  Edmondes,  our  ambassador  at  the 
court  of  Brussels — dated  19th  Nov.,  1605.  "One  Johnson  was  found 
in  the  vault  where  the  Gunpower  Plot  was  discovered.  He  was  asked 
if  he  was  sorry  ?  He  answered  that  he  was  only  sorry  it  liad  not 
taken  place.  He  was  threatened  that  he  should  die  a  worye  death 
than  he  that  killed  the  Prince  of  Orange ;  he  answered,  that  he  could 
bear  it  as  well.  When  Johnson  was  brought  to  the  king's  presence, 
the  king  asked  him  how  he  could  conspire  so  hideous  a  treason  against 
his  children  and  so  many  innocent  souls  who  had  never  ofiended  him  ? 
He  answered,  that  dangerous  diseases  required  a  desperate  remedy; 
and  he  told  some  of  the  Scots  that  his  intent  was  to  have  blown  them 
back  again  into  Scotland  1" — Mordacious  Guy  Fawkes ! 


506  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

expect  from  the  party  of  the  Puritans,  and  their  "  con- 
ceited pai'ity,"  as  he  called  it,  should  he  once  throw  him- 
self into  their  hands,  but  the  fate  his  son  received  from 
them? 

In  the  early  stage  of  the  Reformation,  the  Catholic 
still  entered  into  the  same  church  with  the  Reformed ; 
this  common  union  was  broken  by  the  impolitical  impa- 
tience of  the  court  of  Rome,  who,  jealous  of  the  tranquil- 
lity of  Elizabeth,  hoped  to  weaken  her  government  by 
disunion ;  *  but  the  Reformed  were  already  separating 
among  themselves  by  a  new  race,  who,  fancying  that 
their  religion  was  still  too  Catholic,  were  for  reforming 
the  Reformation.  These  had  most  extravagant  fancies, 
and  were  for  modelling  the  government  according  to  each 
particular  man's  notion.  Were  we  to  bend  to  the  for- 
eign despotism  of  the  Roman  Tiara,  or  that  of  the  repub- 
lican rabble  of  the  Presbytery  of  Geneva  ? 


POLEMICAL    STUDIES    WERE    POLITICAL. 

It  was  in  these  times  that  James  I,,  a  learned  prince, 
applied  to  polemical  studies  ;  properly  understood,  these 
were  in  fact  political  ones.  Lord  Bolingbroke  says,  "  He 
affected  more  learning  than  became  a  king,  which  he 
broached  on  every  occasion  in  such  a  manner  as  would 

*  Sir  Edward  Coko,  attorney-general,  in  the  trial  of  Garnet  the 
Jesuit,  says,  "There  were  no  Recusants  in  England — all  came  to 
church  howsoever  Popishly  inclined,  till  the  Bull  of  Pius  V.  excommu- 
nicated and  deposed  Eliza))eth.  On  this  the  Papists  refused  to  join  iu 
the  public  service. — "State  Trials,"  vol.  i.,  p.  242. 

The  Pope  imagined,  by  false  impressions  ho  had  received,  that  the 
Catholic  party  was  strong  enough  to  prevail  iigainst  Elizabeth.  After- 
wards, when  he  found  his  error,  a  dispensation  was  granted  by  him- 
self and  his  successor,  that  all  Catholics  might  show  outward  obedience 
to  Elizabeth  till  a  happier  opportunity.  Such  are  Catholic  pohtics  and 
Catholic  faith  I 


THE   HAMPTON-COURT   CONFERENCE.  507 

have  misbecome  a  schoolmaster."  "Would  the  politician 
then  require  a  half-learned  king,  or  a  king  witliout  any 
learning  at  all  ?  Our  eloquent  sophist  appears  not  to 
have  recollected  that  polemical  studies  had  long  with  us 
been  considered  as  royal  ones ;  and  that  from  a  slender 
volume  of  the  sort  our  sovereigns  still  derive  the  regal 
distinction  of  "  Defenders  of  the  Faith,"  The  pacific 
government  of  James  I.  required  that  the  king  himself 
should  be  a  master  of  these  controversies  to  be  enabled 
to  balance  the  conflicting  parties ;  and  none  but  a  learned 
king  could  have  exerted  the  industry  or  attained  to  the 
8kiU. 


THE    HAMPTON-COURT     CONFERENCE. 

In"  the  famous  conference  at  Hampton  Court,  which  the 
King  held  with  the  heads  of  the  Nonconformists,  we  see 
his  majesty  conversing  sometimes  with  great  learning  and 
sense,  but  oftener  more  with  the  earnestness  of  a  man, 
than  some  have  imagined  comported  with  the  dignity  of 
a  crowned  head.  The  truth  is,  James,  like  a  true  student, 
indulged,  even  to  his  dress,  an  utter  carelessness  of 
parade,  and  there  was  in  his  character  a  constitutional 
warmth  of  heart  and  a  jocundity  of  temper  which  did 
not  always  adapt  it  to  state-occasions ;  he  thi*ew  out  his 
feelings,  and  sometimes  his  jests.  James,  who  had 
passed  his  youth  in  a  royal  bondage,  felt  that  these 
Nonconformists,  while  they  were  debating  small  points, 
were  reserving  for  hereafter  their  great  ones ;  were 
cloaking  their  republicanism  by  their  theology,  and,  like 
all  other  politicians,  that  their  ostensible  were  not  their 
real    motives.*     Harris   and   Neal,   the   organs   of   the 

*  In  political  history  we  usually  find  that  the  heads  of  a  party  are 
much  wiser  than  the  party  themselves,  so  that,  whatever  they  intend 


508  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE  FIRST. 

Nonconformists,  inveigh  against  James ;  even  Hume, 
with  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century,  has 
pronounced  that  the  king  was  censurable  "  for  entering 
zealously  into  these  frivolous  disputes  of  theology." 
Lord  Bolingbroke  declares  that  the  king  held  this  con- 
ference "  in  haste  to  show  his  parts."  Thus  a  man  of 
genius  substitutes  suggestion  and  assertion  for  accuracy 
of  knowledge.  In  the  present  instance,  it  was  an  attempt 
of  the  Puritans  to  try  the  king  on  his  arrival  in  England ; 
they  presented  a  petition  for  a  conference,  called  "  The 
Millenary  Petition,"  *  from  a  thousand  persons  supposed 
to  have  signed  it ;  the  king  would  not  refuse  it ;  but  so 
far  from  being  "  in  haste  to  show  his  parts,"  that  when 
he  discovered  their  pretended  grievances  were  so  futile, 
"  he  complained  that  he  had  been   troubled  with    such 

to  acquire,  their  first  demands  are  email ;  but  the  honest  souls  who 
are  only  stirred  by  their  own  innocent  zeal,  are  sure  to  complain  that 
their  business  is  done  negligently.  Should  the  party  at  first  succeed, 
then  the  bolder  spirit,  which  they  have  disguised  or  suppressed 
through  policy,  is  left  to  itself;  it  starts  unbridled  and  at  full  gallop. 
All  this  occurred  in  tlie  case  of  the  Puritans.  We  find  that  some  of  the 
rigid  Nonconformists  did  confess  in  a  pamphlet,  "  The  Christian's 
modest  offer  of  the  Silenced  Ministers,"  1606,  that  those  who  were 
appointed  to  speak  for  them  at  Hampton  Court  were  not  of  their 
nomination  or  judgment;  they  insisted  that  these  delegates  should 
declare  at  once  against  the  whole  church  establishment,  &c.,  and  model 
the  government  to  each  particular  man's  notions  !  But  these  delegates 
prudently  refused  to  acquaint  the  king  with  the  conflicting  opinions  of 
their  constituents. — Lansdowne  MSS.  1056,  51. 

This  confession  of  the  Nonconformists  is  also  acknowledged  by  their 
historian  Neale,  vol.  ii.,  p.  419,  4to  edit. 

*  The  petition  is  given  at  length  in  Collier's  "  Eccles.  Hist.,"  vol  iL 
p.  672.  At  this  time  also  the  Lay  Catholics  of  England  printed  at 
Douay,  "  A  Petition  Apologctical,"  to  James  I.  Their  language  is 
remarkable:  they  complained  they  were  excluded  "tliat  supreme 
court  of  parliament  first  founded  by  ar:d  for  Catholike  men,  was 
furnished  with  Catholike  prelates,  poeros,  and  personages  ;  and  so 
continued  till  the  times  of  Edward  VI.  a  childe,  and  Queen  Elizabeth 
a  woman.''^ —  Dodd's  "  Church  History." 


THE   HAMPTON-COURT   CONFERENCE.  509 

importunities,  when  some  more  private  course  might 
have  been  taken  for  their  satisfaction." 

The  narrative  of  this  once  celebrated  conference, 
notwithstanding  the  absurdity  of  the  topics,  becomes  in 
the  hands  of  the  entertaining  Fuller  a  picturesque  and 
dramatic  composition,  where  the  dialogue  and  the 
manners  of  the  speakers  are  after  the  life. 

In  the  course  of  this  conference  we  obtain  a  familiar  in- 
tercourse with  the  king ;  we  may  admire  the  capacity  of 
the  monarch  whose  genius  was  versatile  with  the  subjects  ; 
sliding  from  theme  to  theme  with  the  ease  which  only 
mature  studies  could  obtain ;  entering  into  the  graver 
parts  of  these  discussions  ;  discovering  a  ready  knowl- 
edge of  biblical  learning,  which  would  sometimes  throw 
itself  out  with  his  natural  humour,  in  apt  and  familiar 
illustrations,  throughout  indulging  his  own  pei'sonal 
feelings  with  an  unparalleled  na'ivetL 

The  king  opened  the  conference  with  dignity ;  he  said 
"  he  was  happier  than  his  predecessors,  who  had  to  alter 
what  they  found  established,  but  he  only  to  confirm 
what  was  well  settled."  One  of  the  party  made  a 
notable  discovery,  that  the  surplice  was  a  kind  of 
garment  used  by  the  priests  of  Isis.  The  king  observed 
that  he  had  no  notion  of  this  antiquity,  since  he  had 
always  heard  from  them  that  it  was  "  a  rag  of 
popeiy."  "Dr.  Reynolds,"  said  the  king,  with  an 
air  of  pleasantry,  "  they  used  to  wear  hose  and  shoes  in 
times  of  popery ;  have  you  therefore  a  mind  to  go  bare- 
foot ?"  Reynolds  objected  to  the  words  used  in  matri- 
mony, "  with  my  body  I  thee  worship."  The  king  said 
the  phrase  was  an  usual  English  term,  as  a  gentle)nan  of 
worship,  <fec.,  and  turning  to  the  doctor,  smiling,  said, 
"  Many  a  man  speaks  of  Robin  Hood,  who  never  shot 
in  his  bow ;  if  you  had  a  good  wife  yourself,  you  would 
think  all  the  honour  and  worship  you  could  do  to 
her  were   well  bestowed."     Reynolds  was  not  satisfied 


510  CHARACTER  OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

on  the  37th  article,  declaring  that  "the  Bishop  of 
Rome  hath  no  authority  in  this  land,"  and  desired  it 
should  be  added,  "nor  ought  to  have  any."  In  Bar- 
low's narrative  we  find  that  on  this  his  majesty  heartily 
laughed — a  laugh  easily  caught  up  by  the  lords;  but 
the  king  nevertheless  condescended  to  reply  sensibly 
to  the  weak  objection. 

"  What  speak  you  of  the  pope's  authority  here  ?  Scu- 
harms  jure  quod  habemus  /  and  therefore  inasmuch  as  it 
is  said  he  hath  not,  it  is  plain  enough  that  he  ought  not 
to  have."  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  some  "  pleasant 
discourse  passed,"  in  which  "  a  Pui-itan  "  was  defined  to 
be  a  "  Protestant  frightened  out  of  his  wits."  The  king 
is  more  particularly  vivacious  when  he  alludes  to  the  oc- 
currences of  his  own  reign,  or  suspects  the  Puritans  of 
republican  notions.  On  one  occasion,  to  cut  the  gordian- 
knot,  the  king  royally  decided — "  I  will  not  argue  that 
point  with  you,  but  answer  as  kings  in  parliament,  Le 
Roy  s'avisera.'''' 

When  they  hinted  at  a  Scottish  Presbytery  the  king 
was  somewhat  stirred,  yet  what  is  admirable  in  him  (says 
Barlow)  without  a  show  of  passion.  The  king  had  lived 
among  the  republican  saints,  and  had  been,  as  he  said, 
"  A  king  without  state,  without  honour,  without  order, 
where  beardless  boys  would  brave  us  to  our  face ;  and, 
like  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  though  he  lived  among 
them,  he  was  not  of  them."  On  this  occasion,  although 
the  king  may  not  have  "  shown  his  passion,"  he  broke 
out,  however,  with  a  naive  eifusion,  remarkable  for  paint- 
ing after  the  home-life  a  republican  goverament.  It  must 
have  struck  Hume  forcibly,  for  he  has  preserved  part  of 
it  in  the  body  of  his  history.  Hume  only  consulted  Ful- 
ler.    I  give  the  copious  explosion  from  Barlow : — 

"  If  you  aim  at  a  Scottish  Presbytery,  it  agrecth  as 
well  with  monarchy  as  God  and  the  devil.  Then  Jack, 
and  Tom,  Will,  and  Dick,  shall  meet,  and  at  their  pleas- 


THE   HAMPTON-COURT   CONFERENCE.  511 

ure  censure  me  and  my  council,  and  all  our  proceedings ; 
then  Will  shall  stand  up  and  say,  It  must  be  thus ;  then 
Dick  shall  reply,  Nay,  marry,  but  we  M'ill  have  it  thus. 
And  therefore  here  I  must  once  more  reiterate  my  former 
speech,  Le  Roy  s^avisera.  Stay,  I  pray  you,  for  one  seven 
years  before  you  demand  that  of.  me,  and  if  then  you  find 
me  pursy  and  fat,  I  may  hearken  to  you ;  for  let  that 
government  once  be  up,  I  am  sure  I  shall  be  kept  in 
breath ;  then  shall  we  all  of  us  have  work  enough :  but, 
Dr.  Reynolds,  till  you  find  that  I  grow  lazy,  let  that 
alone." 

The  king  added, 

"  I  will  tell  you  a  tale : — Knox  flattered  the  queen- 
regent  of  Scotland  that  she  was  supreme  head  of  all  the 
church,  if  she  suppressed  the  popish  prelates.  But  how 
long,  trow  ye,  did  this  continue  ?  Even  so  long,  till,  by 
her  authority,  the  popish  bishops  were  repressed,  and  he 
himself,  and  his  adherents,  were  brought  in  and  well 
settled.  Then,  lo !  they  began  to  make  small  account  of 
her  authority,  a«d  took  the  cause  into  their  own  hands." 

This  was  a  pointed  political  tale,  appropriately  told  in 
the  person  of  a  monarch. 

The  king  was  never  deficient  in  the  force  and  quickness 
of  his  arguments.  Even  Neale,  the  great  historian  of  the 
Puritans,  complaining  that  Dean  Barlow  has  cut  ofi"  some 
of  the  king's  speeches,  is  reluctantly  compelled  to  tax 
himself  with  a  high  commendation  of  the  monarch,  who, 
he  acknowledges,  on  one  of  the  days  of  this  conference, 
spoke  against  the  corruptions  of  the  church,  and  the 
practices  of  the  prelates,  insomuch  that  Dr.  Andrews, 
then  dean  of  the  chapel,  said  that  his  majesty  did  that 
day  wonderfully  play  the  Puritan.*      The  king,  indeed, 

*  The  bishops  of  James  I.  were,  as  Fuller  calls  one  of  them,  "potent 
courtiers,"  and  too  worldly-minded  men.  Bancroft  was  a  man  of  vehe- 
ment zeal,  but  of  the  most  grasping  avarice,  as  appears  by  an  epigram- 
matic epitaph  on  his  death  in  Arthur  "Wilson — 


512  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

was  seriously  inclined  to  an  union  of  parties.  More  than 
once  he  silenced  the  angry  tongue  of  Bancroft,  and  tem- 
pei-ed  the  zeal  of  others ;  and  even  commended  when  he 
could  Dr.  Reynolds,  the  chief  of  the  Puritans  ;  the  king 
consented  to  the  only  two  important  articles  that  side 
suggested  ;  a  new  catechism  adapted  to  the  people — 
"  Let  the  weak  be  informed  and  the  wilful  be  punished," 
said  the  king;  and  that  new  translation  of  the  Bible 
which  forms  our  present  version,  "  But,"  added  the 
king,  "it  must  be  without  marginal  notes,  for  the 
Geneva  Bible  is  the  worst  for  them,  full  of  seditious  con- 
ceits ;  Asa  is  censured  for  only  deposing  his  mother  for 
idolatry,  and  not  killing  her."  Thus  early  the  dark  spirit 
of  Machiavel  had  lighted  on  that  of  the  ruthless  Calvin. 
The  grievances  of  our  first  dissenters  were  futile — their 
innovations  interminable;  and  we  discover  the  king's 
notions,  at  the  close  of  a  proclamation,  issued  after  this 

"  Here  lies  his  grace,  in  cold  earth  clad, 
Who  died  with  want  of  what  he  had." 

We  find  a  characteristic  trait  of  this  Bishop  of  London  in  this  confer- 
ence. When  Ellesmere,  Lord  Chancellor,  observed  that  "  livings 
rather  want  learned  men,  than  learned  men  livings,  many  in  the  uni- 
versities pining  for  want  of  places.  I  wish,  therefore,  some  may  have 
single  coats  (one  living),  before  others  have  douhlfts  (pluralities),  and 
this  method  I  have  observed  in  bestowing  the  liing's  benefices."  Ban- 
croft replied,  "  I  commend  your  memorable  care  that  way ;  but  a 
dovhht  is  necessary  in  cold  weather."  Tims  an  avaricious  bishop  could 
turn  ofT,  with  a  miserable  jest,  the  open  avowal  of  his  love  of  plurali- 
ties. «Another,  Ncilo,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  when  any  one  preached  who 
was  remarkable  for  his  piety,  desirous  of  withdrawing  the  king's  at- 
tention from  truths  he  did  not  wisli  to  have  his  majesty  reminded  of, 
would  in  tiie  sermon-time  enlertaiu  the  king  with  a  merry  tale,  which 
the  king  would  laugh  at,  and  tell  those  near  him,  that  he  could  not 
hear  the  preacher  for  the  old  —  bishop;  prefixing  an  epithet  explicit 
of  the  character  of  those  merry  tales.  Kennot  has  preser\'ed  for  us 
the  "rank  relation,"  as  he  calls  it;  not,  he  adds,  but  "  we  have  had 
divers  hammerings  and  conflicts  within  us  to  leave  it  out." — Kennet's 
"History  of  England,"  ii.  729. 


THE   HAMPTON-COURT   CONFERENCE.  513 

conference :  "  Such  is  the  desultory  levity  of  some  peo- 
ple, that  they  are  always  languishing  after  change  and 
novelty,  insomuch  that  were  they  humoured  in  their  in- 
constancy, they  would  expose  the  public  management, 
and  make  the  administration  ridiculous."  Such  is  the 
vigorous  style  of  James  the  First  in  his  proclamations  ; 
and  such  is  the  political  truth,  which  w411  not  die  away 
with  the  conference  at  Hampton  Court. 

These  studies  of  polemical  divinity,  like  those  of  the 
ancient  scholastics,  were  not  to  be  obtained  without  a 
robust  intellectual  exercise.  James  instructed  his  son 
Charles,*  who  excelled  in  them;  and  to  those  studies 

*  That  the  clergy  were  somewhat  jealous  of  their  sovereign's  inter- 
ference in  these  matters  may  be  traced.  When  James  charged  the 
chaplains,  who  were  to  wait  on  the  prince  in  Spain,  to  decline,  as  far 
as  possible,  religious  disputes,  he  added,  that  "  should  any  happen, 
my  son  is  able  to  moderate  in  them."  The  king,  observing  one  of  the 
divines  smile,  grew  warm,  vehemently  affirming,  "  I  tell  ye,  Cliarles 
shall  manage  a  point  in  controversy  with  the  best  studied  divine  of 
ye  all."  What  the  king  said  was  afterwards  confirmed  on  an  extra- 
ordinary occasion,  in  the  conference  Charles  I.  held  ^-ith  Alexander 
Henderson,  the  old  champion  of  the  kirk.  Deprived  of  books,  which 
might  furnish  the  sword  and  pistol  of  controversy,  and  without  a 
chaplain  to  stand  by  him  as  a  second,  Charles  I.  fought  the  theological 
duel ;  and  the  old  man,  cast  down,  retired  with  such  a  sense  of  the 
learning  and  honour  of  the  king,  in  maintaining  the  order  of  episco- 
pacy in  England,  that  his  death,  which  soon  followed,  is  attributed  to 
the  deep  vexation  of  this  discomfiture.  The  veteran,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded in  subverting  the  hierarchy  in  Scotland,  would  not  be  apt  to 
die  of  a  fit  of  conversion ;  but  vexation  might  be  apoplectic  in  an  old 
and  sturdy  disputant.  The  king's  controversy  was  published;  and 
nearly  all  the  writers  agree  he  carried  the  day.  Tet  some  divines 
appear  more  jealous  than  grateful ;  Bishop  Kennet,  touched  by  the 
esprit  du  corps,  honestly  tells  us,  that  "some  thought  the  king  had  been 
better  able  to  protect  the  Church,  if  he  had  not  disputed  for  it."  This 
discovers  all  the  ardour  possible  for  the  establishment,  and  we  are  to 
infer  that  an  English  sovereign  is  only  to  fight  for  his  churchmen. 
But  there  is  a  nobler  office  for  a  sovereign  to  perform  in  ecclesiastical 
history — to  promote  the  learned  and  the  excellent,  and  repress  the 
dissolute  and  the  intolerant. 
33 


514  CHARACTER  OP  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

Whitelocke  attributes  that  aptitude  of  Charles  I.  which 
made  him  so  skilful  a  summer-up  of  arguments,  and 
endowed  him  with  so  clear  a  perception  in  giving  his 
decisions. 


THE   WORKS    OF    JAMES    THE   FmST. 

We  now  turn  to  the  writings  of  James  the  First.  He 
composed  a  treatise  on  demoniacs  and  witches  ;  those 
dramatic  personages  in  courts  of  law.  James  and  his 
council  never  suspected  that  those  ancient  foes  to  man- 
kind could  be  dismissed  by  a  simple  Nolle  prosequi.  "  A 
Commentary  on  the  Revelations,"  which  was  a  favourite 
speculation  then,  and  on  which  greater  geniuses  have 
written  since  his  day.  "  A  Counterblast  to  Tobacco !" 
the  title  more  ludicrous  than  the  design.*     His  majesty 

*  Not  long  before  James  composed  his  treatise  on  "  Dsemonologie," 
the  learned  Wierus  had  published  an  olaboiate  work  on  the  subject. 
"  De  prcestigiis  Dmrnonum  et  incantationibus  et  Veneficiis"  kc,  1568.  He 
advanced  one  step  in  philosophy  by  discovering  that  many  of  the  sup- 
posed cases  of  incantation  originated  in  the  imagination  of  these  sor- 
cerers— but  he  advanced  no  farther,  for  he  acknowledges  the  real  dia- 
bolical presence.  The  pliysician  who  pretended  to  cure  the  disease, 
was  himself  irrecoverably  infected.  Yet  even  this  single  step  of 
"Wierus  was  strenuously  resisted  bj'  the  learned  Bodin,  who,  in  his 
amusing  volume  of  "  Demonomanie  des  Sorciers,"  1 593,  refutes  Wierus. 
Those  are  the  leading  authors  of  the  times ;  who  were  followed  by  a 
crowd.  Thus  James  I.  neither  wanted  authorities  to  quote  nor  great 
minds  to  sanction  his  "Dajraonologie,"  first  published  in  1597.  To  the 
honour  of  England,  a  single  individual,  Reginald  Scot,  with  a  genius 
far  advanced  beyond  his  age,  denied  the  very  existence  of  those 
witches  and  demons,  in  the  curious  volume  of  his  "Discovery  of 
Witchcraft,"  1584.  His  books  were  burned!  and  the  author  was  him- 
self not  quite  out  of  danger;  and  Voetius,  says  Bayle,  complains  that 
when  the  work  was  translated  into  Dutch,  it  raised  up  a  number  of 
libertines  who  laughed  at  all  the  operations  and  the  apparitions  of 
devils.  Casaubon  and  Glanvil,  who  wrote  so  much  later,  treat  Scot 
with  profound  contempt,  assuring  us  his  reasonings  are  childish,  and 
his  philosophy  absurd  1     Such  was  the  reward  of  a  man  of  genius  com- 


THE   WORKS   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST.  515 

terrified  "  the  tobacconists,"  as  the  patriarchs  of  smoking- 
clubs  were  called,  and  who  were  selling  their  very  lands 
and  houses  in  an  epidemical  madness  for  "  a  stinking 
weed,"  by  discovering  that  "  they  wei-e  making  a  sooty 
kitchen  in  their  inward  parts."  *  And  the  king  gained  a 
point  with  the  great  majority  of  his  subjects,  when  he 
demonstrated  to  their  satisfaction  that  the  pope  was  anti- 
christ. Ridiculous  as  these  topics  are  to  us,  the  works 
themselves  were  formed  on  what  modern  philosophers 
affect  to  term  the  principle  of  utility  ;  a  principle  which, 
with  them  indeed,  includes  everything  they  approve  of, 
and  nothing  they  dislike. 

It  was  a  prompt  honesty  of  intention  to  benefit  his 
people,  which  seems  to  have  been  the  urgent  motive  that 
induced  this  monarch  to  become  an  author,  more  than 
any  literary  ambition ;  for  he  writes  on  no  prepared  or 
permanent  topic,  and  even  published  anonymously,  and 
as  he  once  wrote  "  post-haste,"  what  he  composed  or 
designed  for  practical  and  immediate  use ;  and  even  in 

bating  with  popular  prejudices!  Even  so  late  as  1687,  these  popular 
superstitions  were  confirmed  by  the  narrations  and  the  philosophy  of 
Glanvil,  Dr.  More,  &c  The  subject  enters  into  the  "  Commentaries 
on  the  Laws  of  England."  An  edict  of  Louis  XIV.  and  a  statute  by 
George  IL  made  an  end  of  the  whole  Diahkrie.  Had  James  I.  adopted 
the  system  of  Reginald  Scot,  the  king  had  probably  been  branded  as 
an  atheist  king  I 

*  Harris,  with  systematic  ingenuity  against  James  I.,  after  abusing 
this  tract  as  a  wretched  performance,  though  himself  probably  had 
written  a  meaner  one — quotes  the  curious  information  the  king  gives 
of  the  enormous  abuse  to  which  the  practice  of  smoking  was  carried, 
expressing  his  astonishment  at  it.  Yet,  that  James  may  not  escape 
bitter  censure,  he  abuses  the  king  for  levying  a  heavy  tax  on  it  to  pre- 
vent this  ruinous  consumption,  and  his  sUly  policy  in  discouraging  such 
a  branch  of  our  revenues,  and  an  article  so  valuable  to  our  plantations, 
&c.  As  if  James  I.  could  possibly  incur  censure  for  the  discoveries  of 
two  centuries  after,  of  the  nature  of  this  plant  I  James  saw  great 
families  ruined  by  the  epidemic  madness,  and  sacrificed  the  revenues 
which  his  crown  might  derive  from  it,  to  assist  its  suppression.  Thia 
was  patriotism  in  the  monarch. 


516  CHARACTER  OF  JAMES  THE   FIRST. 

that  admirable  treatise  on  the  duties  of  a  sovereign, 
which  he  addressed  to  Prince  Henry,  a  great  portion  is 
directed  to  the  exigencies  of  the  times,  the  parties,  and 
the  circumstances  of  his  own  court.  Of  the  works  now 
more  particularly  noticed,  their  interest  has  ceased  with 
the  melancholy  follies  which  at  length  have  passed 
away ;  although  the  philosophical  inquirer  will  not 
choose  to  drop  this  chapter  in  the  history  of  mankind. 
But  one  fact  in  favour  of  our  royal  author  is  testified  by 
the  honest  Fuller  and  the  cynical  Osborne.  On  the 
king's  arrival  in  England,  having  discovered  the  numer- 
ous impostures  and  illusions  which  he  had  often  referred 
to  as  authorities,  he  grew  suspicious  of  the  whole  system 
of  "Daemonologie,"  and  at  length  recanted  it  entirely. 
With  the  same  conscientious  zeal  James  had  written  the 
book,  the  king  condemned  it ;  and  the  sovereign  separa- 
ted himself  from  the  author,  in  the  cause  of  truth ;  but 
the  clergy  and  the  parliament  persisted  in  making  the 
imaginary  crime  felony  by  the  statute,  and  it  is  only  a 
recent  act  of  parliament  which  has  forbidden  the  appear- 
ance of  the  possessed  and  the  spae-wife. 

But  this  apology  for  having  written  these  treatises 
need  not  rest  on  this  fact,  however  honourably  it  appeals 
to  our  candour.  Let  us  place  it  on  higher  ground,  and 
tell  those  who  asperse  this  monarch  for  his  credulity  and 
intellectual  weakness,  that  they  themselves,  had  they 
lived  in  the  reign  of  James  I.,  had  probably  written  on 
the  same  topics,  and  felt  as  uneasy  at  the  rumour  of  a 
witch  being  a  resident  in  their  neighbourhood  I 


POPULAR  SUPERSTITIONS  OF  THE  AGE. 

This  and  the  succeeding  age  were  the  times  of  omens 
and  meteors,  prognostics  and  providences — of  "  d&v-f^- 


POPULAR  STJPBRSTITTOITS  OF  THE  AGE.  517 

tality,"  or  the  superstition  of  fortunate  and  unfortunate 
days,  and  the  combined  powers  of  astrology  and  magic. 
It  was  only  at  the  close  of  the  century  of  James  I.  that 
Bayle  wrote  a  treatise  on  comets,  to  prove  that  they  had 
no  influence  in  the  cabinets  of  princes  ;  this  was,  how- 
ever, done  with  all  the  precaution  imaginable.  The 
greatest  minds  were  then  sinking  under  such  popular 
Buperstitions :  and  whoever  has  read  much  of  the  private 
history  of  this  age  will  have  smiled  at  their  ludicrous 
terrors  and  bewildered  reasonings.  The  most  ordinary 
events  were  attributed  to  an  interposition  of  Providence. 
In  the  unpublished  memoirs  of  that  learned  antiquary, 
Sir  Symonds  D'Ewes,  such  frequently  occur.  When  a 
comet  appeared,  and  D'Ewes,  for  exercise  at  college,  had 
been  ringing  the  great  bell,  and  entangled  himself  in  the 
rope,  which  had  nearly  strangled  him,  he  resolves  not  to 
ring  while  the  comet  is  in  the  heavens.  When  a  fire 
happened  at  the  Six  Clerks'  Office,  of  whom  his  father 
was  one,  he  inquires  into  the  most  prominent  sins  of  the 
six  clerks :  these  were  the  love  of  the  world,  and  doing 
business  on  Sundays :  and  it  seems  they  thought  so 
themselves;  for  after  the  fire  the  office-door  was  fast 
closed  on  the  Sabbath,  When  the  Thames  had  an 
unusual  ebb  and  flow,  it  was  observed,  that  it  had  never 
happened  in  their  recollection,  but  just  before  the  rising 
of  the  Earl  of  Essex  in  Elizabeth's  reign, — and  Sir 
Symonds  became  uneasy  at  the  political  aspect  of  afiairs. 
All  the  historians  of  these  times  are  very  particular  in 
marking  the  bearded  beams  of  blazing  stars  ;  and  the 
first  public  event  that  occurs  is  always  connected  -with 
the  radiant  course.  Arthur  Wilson  describes  one  which 
preceded  the  death  of  the  simple  queen  of  James  L  It 
was  generally  imagined  that  "  this  great  light  in  the 
heaven  was  sent  as  a  flambeaux  to  her  funeral ;"  but  the 
historian  discovers,  while  "  this  blaze  was  burning,  the 
fire  of  war  broke  out  in  Bohemia."    It  was  found  difficult 


518  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES  THE   FIRST. 

to  decide  between  the  two  opinions  ;    and  Rushworth, 
who  wrote  long  afterwards,  carefully  chronicles  both. 

The  truth  is,  the  greatest  geniuses  of  the  age  of  James 
L  were  as  deeply  concerned  in  these  investigations  as 
his  Majesty.  Had  the  great  Verulam  emancipated  him- 
self from  all  the  dreams  of  his  age  ?  He  speaks  indeed 
cautiously  of  witchcraft,  but  does  not  deny  its  occult 
agency ;  and  of  astrology  he  is  rather  for  the  improve- 
ment than  the  rejection.  The  bold  spirit  of  Rawleigh 
contended  with  the  superstitions  of  the  times ;  but  how 
feeble  is  the  contest  where  we  fear  to  strike  !  Even 
Rawleigh  is  prodigal  of  his  praise  to  James  for  the  king's 
chapter  on  magic.  The  great  mind  of  Rawleigh  per- 
ceived how  much  men  are  formed  and  changed  by  educor 
tion ;  but,  were  this  principle  admitted  to  its  extent, 
the  stars  would  lose  their  influence  !  In  pleading  for 
the  free  agency  of  man,  he  would  escape  from  the  perni- 
cious tendency  of  predestination,  or  the  astral  influence, 
which  yet  he  allows.  To  extricate  himself  from  the 
dilemma,  he  invents  an  analogical  reasoning  of  a  royal 
power  of  dispensing  with  the  laws  in  extreme  cases ;  so 
that,  though  he  does  not  deny  "  the  binding  of  the  stars," 
he  declares  they  are  controllable  by  the  will  of  the 
Creator,  In  this  manner,  fettered  by  prevalent  opinions, 
he  satisfies  the  superstitions  of  an  astrological  age,  and 
the  penetration  of  his  own  genius.  At  a  much  later 
period  Dr.  Henry  More,  a  writer  of  genius,  confirmed 
the  ghost  and  demon  creed,  by  a  number  of  facts,  as 
marvellously  pleasant  as  any  his  own  poetical  fancy  could 
have  invented.  Other  great  authors  have  not  less  dis- 
tinguished themselves.  Wlien  has  there  appeared  a 
single  genius  who  at  once  could  free  himself  of  the  tra- 
ditional prejudices  of  his  contemporaries — nay,  of  his 
own  party  ?  Genius,  in  its  advancement  beyond  the 
intelligence  of  its  own  age,  is  but  progressive  ;  it  is  fixnci- 
fully  said  to  soar,  but  it  only  climbs.     Yet  the  minds  of 


} 


HIS  HABITS  THOSE  OF  A  MAN  OF  LKTTERS.       519 

some  authors  of  tliis  age  are  often  discovered  to  be  supe- 
rior to  their  work ;  because  the  mind  is  impelled  by  its 
own  inherent  powers,  but  the  work  usually  originates 
in  the  age.  James  L  once  acutely  observed,  how  "  the 
author  may  be  wise,  but  the  work  foolish." 

Thus  minds  of  a  higher  rank  than  our  royal  author  had 
not  yet  cleared  themselves  out  of  these  clouds  of  popular 
prejudices.  We  now  proceed  to  more  decisive  results  of 
the  superior  capacity  of  this  much  ill-used  monarch. 


THE    HABITS    OF    JAMES    THE  FmST    THOSE 
OF  A  MAN   OF   LETTERS. 

The  habits  of  life  of  this  monarch  were  those  of  a  man 
of  letters.  His  first  studies  were  soothed  by  none  of  their 
enticements.  If  James  loved  literature,  it  was  for  itself; 
for  Buchanan  did  not  tinge  the  rim  of  the  vase  with 
honey;  and  the  bitterness  was  tasted  not  only  in  the 
draught,  but  also  in  the  rod.  In  some  princes,  the  harsh 
discipline  James  passed  through  has  raised  a  strong  aver- 
sion against  literature.  The  Dauphin,  for  whose  use  was 
formed  the  well-known  edition  of  the  classics,  looked  on 
the  volumes  with  no  eye  of  love.  To  free  himself  of  his 
tutor,  Huet,  he  eagerly  consented  to  an  early  marriage. 
"  Now  we  shall  see  if  Mr.  Huet  shall  any  more  keep  me 
to  ancient  geography  !"  exclaimed  the  Dauphin,  rejoic- 
ing in  the  first  act  of  despotism.  This  ingenuous  sally,  it 
is  said,  too  deeply  affected  that  learned  man  for  many 
years  afterwards.  Huet's  zealous  gentleness  (for  how 
could  Huet  be  too  rigid  ?)  wanted  the  art  which  Bu- 
chanan disdained  to  practise.  But,  in  the  case  of  the 
prince  of  Scotland,  a  constitutional  timidity  combining 
with  an  ardour  for  study,  and  therefoi'e  a  veneration  for 
his  tutor,  produced  a  more  remarkable  effect.  Sucli  was 
the  terror  which  the  remembrance  of  this  illustrious  but 


520  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

inexorable  republican  left  on  the  imagination  of  his  royal 
pupil,  that  even  so  late  as  when  James  was  seated  on 
the  English  throne,  once  the  appearance  of  his  frowning 
tutor  in  a  dream  greatly  agitated  the  king,  who  in  vain 
attempted  to  pacify  him  in  this  portentous  vision.  This 
extraordinary  fact  may  be  found  in  a  manuscript  letter 
of  that  day.* 

James,  even  by  the  confession  of  his  bitter  satirist, 
Francis  Osborne,  "  dedicated  rainy  weather  to  his 
standish,  and  fair  to  his  hounds."  His  life  had  the 
uniformity  of  a  student's ;  but  the  regulated  life  of  a 
learned  monarch  must  have  weighed  down  the  gay  and 
dissipated  with  the  deadliest  monotony.  Hence  one  of 
these  courtiers  declared  that,  if  he  were  to  awake  after  a 
Bleep  of  seven  years'  continuance,  he  would  undertake  to 

*  The  learned  Mede  wrote  the  present  letter  soon  after  another, 
which  had  not  been  acknowledged,  to  his  friend  Sir  M.  Stuteville ;  and 
the  writer  is  uneasy  lest  the  political  secrets  of  the  day  might  bring 
the  parties  into  trouble.  It  seems  he  was  desu-ous  that  letter  should 
be  read  and  then  burnt. 

"March  31,  1622. 

"  I  hope  my  letter  miscarried  not ;  if  it  did  I  am  in  a  sweet  picklo 
I  desired  to  hear  from  you  of  the  receipt  and  extinction  of  it.  Thoilgh 
there  is  no  danger  in  my  letters  whilst  report  is  so  rife,  j'et  when  it  is 
forgotten  they  will  not  be  so  safe ;  but  your  danger  is  as  great  as  mine — 

"Mr.  Downham  was  with  mo,  now  (;ome  from  London.  He  told  me 
that  it  was  three  years  ago  since  those  verses  were  delivered  to  the 
king  in  a  dream,  by  his  Master  Buchanan,  who  seemed  to  check  him 
severely,  as  he  used  to  do ;  and  his  Majesty,  in  his  dream,  seemed  desir- 
ous to  pacify  him,  but  he,  turning  away  with  a  frowning  counttnance, 
would  utter  those  verses,  which  his  Majesty,  perfectly  remembering, 
repeated  the  next  day,  and  many  took  notice  of  them.  Now,  by  occa- 
sion of  the  late  soreness  in  his  arm,  and  the  doubtfulness  what  it 
would  prove ;  especially  having,  by  mischance,  fallen  into  the  fire  with 
that  arm,  the  remembrance  of  the  verses  began  to  trouble  him." 

It  iippoars  tliat  these  verses  were  of  a  tlireatening  nature,  since,  in  a 
melanclioly  fit,  they  »vore  recalled  to  rofoUection  after  an  interval  of 
three  years;  the  eraes  are  lost  to  us,  with  the  letter  whicli  contained 
them. 


HIS  HABITS  THOSE  OF  A  MAN  OF  LETTERS.       521 

enumerate  the  whole  of  his  Majesty's  occupations, 
and  every  dish  that  had  been  placed  on  the  table  during 
the  interval.  But  this  courtier  was  not  aware  that 
the  monotony  which  the  king  occasioned  him  was  not 
so  much  in  the  king  himself  as  in  his  own  volatile 
spirit. 

The  table  of  James  I.  was  a  trial  of  wits,  says  a  more 
learned  courtier,  who  often  partook  of  these  prolonged 
conversations :  those  genial  and  convivial  conferences 
were  the  recreations  of  the  king,  and  the  means  often  of 
advancing  those  whose  talents  had  then  an  opportunity 
of  discovering  themselves.  A  life  so  constant  in  its 
pursuits  was  to  have  been  expected  from  the  temper  of 
him  who,  at  the  view  of  the  Bodleian  library,  exclaimed, 
"  Were  I  not  a  king,  I  would  be  an  university  man  ;  and 
if  it  were  so  that  I  must  be  a  prisoner,  I  would  have 
no  other  prison  than  this  library,  and  be  chained  together 
with  all  these  goodly  authors."* 

Study,  indeed,  became  one  of  the  businesses  of  life  with 
our  contemplative  monarch ;  and  so  zealous  was  James 
to  form  his  future  successor,  that  he  even  seriously 
engaged  in  the  education  of  both  his  sons.  James  L 
offers  the  singular  spectacle  of  a  father  who  was  at  once 
a  preceptor  and  a  monarch  :  it  was  in  this  spirit  the  king 
composed  his  "  Basilicon  Doron ;  or,  His  Majesty's  Instruc- 
tions to  his  dearest  Son  Henry  the  Prince,"  a  work  of 
which  something  more  than  the  intention  is  great ;  and 
he  directed  the  studies  of  the  unfortunate  Charles.  That 
both  these  princes  were  no  comnion  pupils  may  be  fairly 
attributed  to  the  king  himself.  Never  did  the  character 
of  a  young  prince  shoot  out  with  nobler  promises  than 
Henry  ;  an  enthusiast  for  literature  and  arms,  that  prince 

*  In  this  well-known  exclamation  of  James  I.,  a  witty  allusion  has 
been  probably  overlooked.  The  king  had  in  his  mind  the  then  preva- 
lent custom  of  securing  books  by  fastening  them  to  tlie  shelves  by 
chains  long  enough  to  reach  to  the  reading-desks  under  them. 


522  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

early  showed  a  great  and  commanding  spirit.  Charlea 
was  a  man  of  fine  taste  :  he  had  talents  and  virtues, 
errors  and  misfortunes ;  but  he  was  not  without  a  spirit 
equal  to  the  days  of  his  trial. 


FACILITY    AND    COPIOUSNESS    OF   HIS   COM- 
POSITION. 

The  mind  of  James  I.  had  at  all  times  the  fulness  of  a 
student's,  delighting  in  the  facility  and  copiousness  of 
composition.  The  king  wrote  in  one  week  one  hundred 
folio  pages  of  a  monitory  address  to  the  European  sov- 
ereigns ;  and,  in  as  short  a  time,  his  apology,  sent  to  the 
pope  and  cardinals.  These  he  delivered  to  the  bishops, 
merely  as  notes  for  their  use  ;  but  they  were  declared  to 
form  of  themselves  a  complete  answer.  "  Qua  felicitate 
they  were  done,  let  others  judge  ;  but  Qua  celeritate,  I  can 
tell,"  says  the  courtly  bishop  who  collected  the  king's 
works,  and  who  is  here  quoted,  not  for  the  compliment 
he  would  infer,  but  for  the  fact  he  states.  The  week's 
labour  of  his  majesty  provoked  from  Cardinal  Perron 
about  one  thousand  pages  in  folio,  and  I'eplies  and 
rejoinders  from  the  learned  in  Europe.* 

*  Mr.  Lodge,  in  his  "  Illustrations  of  British  History,"  praises  and 
abuses  James  I.  for  the  very  same  treatises.  Mr.  Lodge,  dropping  the 
sober  character  of  tlie  antiquary  for  the  smarter  one  of  the  critic,  tella 
us,  "  James  had  the  good  fortune  to  gain  the  two  points  he 
principally  aimed  at  in  the  publication  of  these  dull  treatUes — the 
reputation  of  an  acute  disputant,  and  the  honour  of  having  Cardinal 
BoUarmin  for  an  antagonist."  Did  Mr.  Lodge  ever  read  these  "  dull 
treatises  ?"  I  declare  I  never  have  ;  but  I  believe  these  treatises  are 
not  dull,  from  the  inference  he  draws  from  them  :  for  how  any  writer 
can  gain  tlio  reputation  of  "an  acute  disputant"  by  writing  "dull 
treatises,"  Mr.  Lodge  only  can  explain.  It  is  in  this  manner,  and  by 
unphilosoijhical  critics,  that  tlie  literary  reputation  of  Janus  has  been 
flourished  down  by  modern  pens.  It  was  sure  gamo  to  attack 
James  1. 1 


HIS  ELOQUENCE.  523 


HIS  ELOQUENCE. 

The  eloquence  of  James  is  another  feature  in  the  liter- 
ary character  of  this  monarch.  Amid  the  sycophancy  of 
the  court  of  a  learned  sovereign  some  truths  will  mani- 
fest themselves.  Bishop  Williams,  in  his  funeral  eulogy 
of  James  I.,  has  praised  with  warmth  the  eloquence  of 
the  departed  monarch,  whom  he  intimately  knew ;  and 
this  was  an  acquisition  of  James's,  so  manifest  to  all,  that 
the  bishop  made  eloquence  essential  to  the  dignity  of  a 
monarch;  observing,  that  "it  was  the  want  of  it  that 
made  Moses,  in  a  manner,  refuse  all  government,  though 
offered  by  God."  *  He  Avould  not  have  hazarded  so  pecu- 
liar an  eulogium,  had  not  the  monarch  been  distinguished 
by  that  talent. 

Hume  first  observed  of  James  I.,  that  "  the  speaker  of 
the  House  of  Commons  is  usually  an  eminent  man ;  yet 
the  harangue  of  his  Majesty  will  always  be  foimd  much  su- 
perior to  that  of  the  speaker  in  every  parliament  during 

*  This  funeral  sermon,  by  layiug  such  a  stress  on  the  eloqueyice  of 
James  I.,  it  is  said,  occasioned  the  disgrace  of  the  zealous  bishop ;  per- 
haps, also,  by  the  arts  of  the  new  courtiers  practising  on  the  feelings 
of  the  youug  monarch.  It  appears  that  Charles  betrayed  frequent 
symptoms  of  impatience. 

This  allusion  to  the  stammering  of  Moses  was  most  unlucky;  for  Charles 
had  this  defect  in  his  delivery,  which  he  laboured  all  his  life  to  correct. 
In  the  first  speech  from  the  throne,  he  alludes  to  it :  "  Now,  because 
/  am  unfit  for  much  speaking,  I  mean  to  bring  up  the  fashion  of  my  pre- 
decessors, to  have  my  lord-lceeper  speak  for  me  in  most  things."  And 
he  closed  a  speech  to  the  Scottish  parhament  by  saying,  that  "lie  does 
not  ofler  to  endear  himself  by  words,  which  indeed  is  not  my  way." 
This,  however,  proved  to  be  one  of  those  little  circumstances  which 
produce  a  more  important  result  than  is  suspected.  By  this  substitu- 
tion of  a  lord-keeper  instead  of  the  sovereign,  he  failed  in  exciting  the 
personal  affections  of  his  parliament.  Even  the  most  gracious  speech 
from  the  lips  of  a  lord-keeper  is  but  formally  deUvered,  and  coldly 
received ;  and  Charles  had  not  yet  learned  that  there  are  no  deputies 
for  our  feelings. 


524  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES  THE   FIRST. 

this  reign."  His  numerous  proclamations  are  evidently 
wrought  by  his  own  hand,  and  display  the  pristine  vigour 
of  the  state  of  our  age  of  genius.  That  the  state-papers 
were  usually  composed  by  himself,  a  passage  in  the  Life 
of  the  Lord-keeper  Williams  testifies ;  and  when  Sir 
Edward  Conway,  who  had  been  bred  a  soldier,  and  was 
even  illiterate,  became  a  viscount,  and  a  royal  secretary, 
by  the  appointment  of  Buckingham,  the  king,  who  in  fact 
wanted  no  secretary,  would  often  be  merry  over  his  im- 
perfect scrawls  in  writing,  and  his  hacking  of  sentences 
in  reading,  often  breaking  out  in  laughter,  exclaiming, 
"  Stenny  has  provided  me  with  a  secretary  who  can  neither 
write  nor  read,  and  a  groom  of  my  bedchamber  who  can- 
not truss  my  points," — this  latter  person  having  but  one 
hand  !  It  is  evident,  since  Lord  Conway,  the  most  inef- 
ficient secretary  ever  king  had — and  I  have  myself  seen 
his  scrawls — remained  many  years  in  office,  that  James  L 
required  no  secretary,  and  transacted  his  afiairs  with  his 
own  mind  and  hand.  These  habits  of  business  and  of  study 
prove  that  James  indulged  miich  less  those  of  indolence, 
for  which  he  is  so  gratuitously  accused. 


HIS  WIT. 

Amtd  all  the  ridicule  and  contempt  in  which  the  intel- 
lectual capacity  of  James  I.  is  involved,  this  college- 
pedant,  who  is  imagined  to  have  given  in  to  every 
species  of  false  wit,  and  never  to  have  reached  beyond 
quibbles,  puns,  conceits,  and  quo-libets, — was  in  truth  a 
groat  wit ;  quick  in  retort,  and  happy  in  illustration  ;  and 
often  delivering  opinions  with  a  sententious  force.  More 
wit  and  wisdom  from  his  lips  have  descended  to  us  than 
from  any  other  of  our  sovereigns.  One  of  the  malicious 
writers  of  his  secret  history,  Sir  Antliony  Weldon,  not 
only  informs  us  that  he  was  witty,  but  describes  the  man- 


SPECIMENS   OF   HIS   HUMOUR,    ETC.  525 

ner  :  "  He  was  very  witty,  and  had  as  many  witty  jests 
as  any  man  Kving :  at  which  he  would  not  smile  himself, 
but  deliver  them  in  a  grave  and  serious  manner,"  Thus 
the  king  w^as  not  only  witty,  but  a  dextrous  wit :  nor  is 
he  one  of  those  who  are  recorded  as  having  only  said  one 
good  thing  in  their  lives ;  for  his  vein  was  not  apt  to 
dry. 

His  conversations,  like  those  of  most  literary  men,  he 
loved  to  prolong  at  table.  We  find  them  described  by 
one  who  had  partaken  of  them : 

"  The  reading  of  some  books  before  him  was  very 
frequent,  while  he  was  at  his  repast ;  and  other^\ase  he 
collected  knowledge  by  variety  of  questions,  which  he 
carved  out  to  the  capacity  of  difiei'ent  persons.  Me- 
thought  his  hunting  humour  was  not  oif,  while  the 
learned  stood  about  him  at  his  board ;  he  was  ever  in 
chase  after  some  disputable  doubts,  which  he  would  wind 
and  turn  about  with  the  most  stabbing  objections  that 
ever  I  hoard  ;  and  was  as  pleasant  and  fellow-like,  in  all 
these  discourses,  as  with  his  huntsman  in  the  field.  Those 
who  were  ripe  and  weighty  in  their  answers  were  ever 
designed  for  some  place  of  credit  or  profit."  * 


SPECBIEN^S  OF  HIS   HIBIOUR,  AOT)  OBSERYA- 
TIONS  O^  HUjVIAN  life. 

The  relics  of  witticisms  and  observations  on  human 
life,  on  state  aflairs,  in  literature  and  history,  are  scat- 
tered among  contemporary  writers,  and  some  are  even 
traditional ;  I  regret  that  I  have  not  'preserved  many 
which  occurred  in  the  course  of  reading.  It  has  hap- 
pened, however,  that  a  man  of  genius  has  preserved  for 

*  Hacket's  curious  "  Life  of  the  Lord-keeper  Williams,"  p.  38,  Part 
11. 


526  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES  THE   FIRST. 

posterity  some  memorials  of  the  wit,  the  learning,  and 
the  sense  of  the  monarch.* 

In  giving  some  loose  specimens  of  the  wit  and  capacity 
of  a  man,  if  they  are  too  few,  it  may  be  imagined  that 
they  are  so  from  their  rarity ;  and  if  too  many,  the  page 
swells  into  a  mere  collection.  But  truth  is  not  over-nice 
to  obtain  her  purpose,  and  even  the  common  labours  she 
inspires  are  associated  Avith  her  pleasures. 

Early  in  life  James  I.  had  displayed  the  talent  of  apt 
allusion,  and  his  classical  wit  on  the  Spaniards,  that  "He 
expected  no  other  favour  fi'om  them  than  the  courtesy  of 
Polyphemus  to  Ulysses — to  be  the  last  devoured,"  de- 
lighted Elizabeth,  and  has  even  entered  into  our  history. 
Arthur  Wilson,  at  the  close  of  his  "  Life  of  James  I.," 
has  preserved  one  of  his  apothegms,  while  he  censures 
him  for  not  making  timely  use  of  it !  "  Let  that  prince, 
who  would  beware  of  conspiracies,  be  rather  jealous  of 
such  whom  his  extraordinary  favours   have  advanced, 


*  In  the  Harl.  MSS.  '7582,  Art.  3,  one  entitled  "  Crumras  fallen  from 
King  James's  Table;  or  his  Table-Talk,  taken  by  Sir  Tlioinas  Overbury. 
The  original  being  in  his  own  handwritiug."  This  MS.  has  been,  per- 
haps, imperfectly  printed  in  the  "Prince's  Cabala,  or  Mysteries  of 
State,"  1715.  This  Collection  of  Sir  Tliomas  Overbury  was  shortened 
by  his  unhappy  fate,  since  he  perished  early  in  the  reign. — Another 
Harl.  MS.  contains  things  "  as  they  were  at  sundrie  times  spoken  by 
James  I."  I  have  drawn  others  from  the  Hurl.  MSS.  6;i95.  "We  liave 
also  printed,  "  Wittie  Observations,  gathered  in  King  James's  Ordinary 
Discourse,"  1643;  "King  James,  his  Apothegmes  or  Table-Talk  as  they 
were  by  him  delivered  occasionally,  and  by  the  publisher,  his  quondam 
servant,  carefully  received,  by  B.  A.,  gent.  4°.  in  eight  leaves,  1643." 
Tlie  collector  was  Ben".  Agar,  who  had  gathered  them  in  his  youth  ; 
"Witty  Apothegmes,  delivered  at  several  times  by  King  James,  King 
Charles,  the  Marquis  of  Worcester,"  &c.,  1658. 

The  collection  of  Apothegms  formed  by  Lord  Bacon  offers  many 
instances  of  the  king's  wit  and  sense.  See  Lord  Bacon's  Apothegms 
new  and  old;  they  are  numbered  to  275  in  the  edition  1819.  Basil 
Montague,  in  his  edition,  has  separated  vrhat  he  distinguishes  as  the 
spurious  ones 


SPECIMENS   OF   HIS   HUMOUR,  ETC.  527 

than  of  those  whom  his  displeasure  have  discontented. 
Tliese  want  means  to  execute  their  pleasures,  but  those 
have  means  at  pleasure  to  execute  their  desires." — ^Wil- 
son himself  ably  develops  this  important  state-observa- 
tion, by  adding,  that  "  Ambition  to  rule  is  more  vehement 
than  malice  to  revenge."  A  pointed  reflection,  which 
rivals  a  maxim  of  Rochefoucault. 

The  king  observed  that,  "  Very  wise  men  and  very 
fools  do  little  harm ;  it  is  the  mediocrity  of  wisdom  that 
troubleth  all  the  world." — He  described,  by  a  lively  image, 
the  differences  which  rise  in  argument :  "  Men,  in  argu- 
ing, are  often  carried  by  the  force  of  words  farther  asun- 
der than  their  question  was  at  first ;  like  two  ships  going 
out  of  the  same  haven,  their  landing  is  many  times  whole 
countries  distant." 

One  of  the  great  national  grievances,  as  it  appeared 
both  to  the  government  and  the  people,  in  James's  reign, 
was  the  perpetual  growth  of  the  metropolis  ;  and  the  na- 
tion, like  an  hypochondriac,  was  ludicrously  terrified  that 
their  head  was  too  monstrous  for  their  body,  and  drew 
all  the  moisture  of  life  from  the  remoter  parts.  It  is 
amusing  to  observe  the  endless  and  vain  precautions  em- 
ployed to  stop  all  new  buildings,  and  to  force  persons  oiit 
of  town  to  reside  at  their  country  mansions.  Proclama- 
tions warned  and  exhorted,  but  the  very  interference  of 
prohibition  rendered  the  crowded  town  more  delightful. 
One  of  its  attendant  calamities  was  the  prevalent  one  of 
that  day,  the  plague  ;  and  one  of  those  state  libels,  which 
were  early  suppressed,  or  never  printed,  entitled,  "  Ba- 
laam's Ass,"  has  this  passage :  "  In  this  deluge  of  new 
buildings,  we  shall  be  all  poisoned  with  breathing  in  one 
another's  faces ;  and  your  Majesty  has  most  truly  said, 
England  will  shortly  be  London,  and  London,  England.'* 
It  was  the  popular  wish,  that  country  gentlemen  should 
reside  more  on  their  estates,  and  it  was  on  this  occasion 
that  the  king  made  that  admirable  allusion,  whicli  has  been 


528  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

in  our  days  repeated  in  the  House  of  Commons :  "  Gen- 
tlemen resident  on  their  estates  were  like  ships  in  port — 
their  value  and  magnitude  were  felt  and  acknowledged ; 
but,  when  at  a  distance,  as  their  size  seemed  insignificant, 
so  their  worth  and  importance  were  not  duly  estimated." 
The  king  abounded  with  similar  observations ;  for  he 
drew  from  life  more  than  even  from  books. 

James  is  reproached  for  being  deficient  in  political  saga- 
city ;  notwithstanding  that  he  somewhat  prided  himself 
on  what  he  denominated  "  king's-craff"  This  is  the  fate 
of  a  pacific  and  domestic  prince ! 

"  A  king,"  said  James,  "  ought  to  be  a  presei'ver  of  his 
people,  as  well  of  their  fortunes  as  lives,  and  not  a  de- 
stroyer of  his  subjects.  Were  I  to  make  such  a  war  as 
the  King  of  France  doth,  with  such  tyranny  on"  his 
own  subjects — with  Protestants  on  one  side,  and  his  soldiers 
drawn  to  slaughter  on  the  other, — I  would  put  myself  in 
a  monastery  all  my  days  after,  and  repent  me  that  I  had 
brought  my  subjects  to  such  misery." 

That  James  was  an  adept  in  his  "  king's-craft,"  by  which 
term  he  meant  the  science  of  politics,  but  which  has  been 
so  often  misinterpreted  in  an  ill  sense,  even  the  confession 
of  such  a  writer  as  Sir  Anthony  Weldon  testifies;  who 
acknowledges  that  "  no  prince  living  knew  how  to  make 
use  of  men  better  than  King  James."  He  certainly  fore- 
saw the  spirit  of  the  Commons,  and  predicted  to  the  prince 
and  Buckingham,  events  which  occurred  after  his  death. 
When  Cranfield,  Earl  of  Middlesex,  whom  James  consid- 
ered a  useful  servant,  Buckingham  sacrificed,  as  it  would 
appear,  to  the  clamours  of  a  party,  James  said,  "You 
are  making  a  rod  for  your  own  back;"  and  when  Prince 
Charles  was  encouraging  the  frequent  petitions  of  the 
Commons,  .Tames  told  him,  "  You  will  live  to  have  your 
bellyful  of  petitions."  The  following  anecdote  may  serve 
to  prove  his  political  sagacity: — When  the  Emperor  of 
Germany,  instigated  by  the  Pope  and    his  own  state-in- 


SPECIMENS  OF  HIS  HUMOUR,  ETC.  529 

terests,  projected  a  ciMsade  against  the  Turks,  he  solicited 
from  Jaraes  the  aid  of  three  thousand  Englishmen ;  the 
wise  and  pacific  monarch,  in  return,  advised  the  emperor's 
ambassador  to  apply  to  France  and  Spain,  as  being  more 
nearly  concerned  in  this  project:  but  the  ambassador  very 
ingeniously  argued,  that,  James  being  a  more  remote 
prince,  Avould  more  effectually  alarm  the  Turks,  from  a 
notion  of  a  general  armament  of  the  Christian  princes 
against  them.  James  got  rid  of  the  importunate  ambassa- 
dor by  observing,  that  "  three  thousand  Englishmen 
would  do  no  more  hurt  to  the  Turks  than  fleas  to  their 
skins:  great  attempts  may  do  good  by  a  destruction,  but 
little  ones  only  stir  up  anger  to  hurt  themselves." 

His  vein  of  familiar  humour  flowed  at  all  times,  and.  his 
facetiousness  was  sometimes  indulged  at  the  cost  of  his 
royalty.  In  those  unhappy  difierences  between  him  and 
his  parliament,  one  day  mounting  his  horse,  which,  though 
usually  sober  and  q\iiet,  began  to  bound  and  prance, — 
"  Sirrah  !"  exclaimed  the  king,  who  seemed  to  fancy  that 
his  favourite  prerogative  was  somewhat  resisted  on  this 
occasion,  "  if  you  be  not  quiet,  I'll  send  you  to  the  five 
hundred  kings  in  the  lower  house :  they'll  quickly  tame 
you."  When  one  of  the  Lumleys  was  pushing  on  his 
lineal  ascent  beyond  the  patience  of  the  hearers,  the  king 
to  cut  short  the  tedious  descendant  of  the  Lumleys,  cries 
out,  "  Stop  mon  !  thou  needst  no  more :  now  I  learn  that 
Adam's  surname  was  Lumley !"  ^Yhen  Colonel  Gray,  a 
military  adventurer  of  that  day,  just  returned  from  Ger- 
many, seemed  vain  of  his  accoutrements,  on  which  he  had 
spent  his  all, — the  king,  staring  at  this  buckled,  belted, 
sworded,  and  pistolled,  but  ruined,  martinet,  observed, 
that  "  this  town  was  so  well  fortified,  that,  were  it  victual 
led,  it  might  be  impregnable." 
34 


530  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

EVIDENCES  OF    HIS  SAGACITY    IN   THE  DIS- 
COVERY   OF   TRUTH. 

Pos3EssiN"a  the  talent  of  eloquence,  the  quickness  of  wit, 
and  the  diversified  knowledge  which  produced  his  "  Ta- 
ble-talk," we  find  also  many  evidences  of  his  sagacity  in 
the  discovery  of  truth,  with  that  patient  zeal  so  honoura- 
ble to  a  monarch.  When  the  shipwrights,  jealous  of 
Pett,  our  great  naval  architect,  formed  a  party  against 
him,  the  king  would  judge  with  his  own  eyes.  Having 
examined  the  materials  depreciated  by  Pett's  accusers,  he 
declared  that  "  the  cross-grain  was  in  the  men,  not  in  the 
timber,"  The  king,  on  historical  evidence,  and  by  what 
he  said  in  his  oavu  works,  claims  the  honour  of  discover- 
ing tlie  gunpowder  plot,  by  the  sagacity  and  reflection 
Avith  which  he  solved  the  enigmatical  and  ungramraatical 
letter  sent  on  that  occasion.  The  train  of  his  thoughts 
has  even  been  preserved  to  us ;  and  although  a  loose  pas- 
sage, in  a  priA^ate  letter  of  the  Earl  of  Salisbury,  contra- 
dicted by  anotlier  passage  in  the  same  letter,  would  indi- 
cate that  the  earl  was  the  man ;  yet  even  Mrs.  Macaulay 
acknowledges  the  propriety  of  attributing  the  discovery 
to  the  king's  sagacity.  Several  proofs  of  his  zeal  and  re- 
flection in  the  detection  of  imposture  might  be  adduced; 
and  the  reader  may,  perhaps,  be  amused  at  these. 

There  existed  a  conspiracy  against  the  Countess  of  Exe- 
ter by  Lady  Lake,  and  her  daughter,  Lady  Ross.  They 
had  contrived  to  forge  a  letter  in  the  Countess's  name,  in 
wliieh  she  confessed  all  the  lieavy  ci'imes  thoy  accused  her 
of,  wliich  were  incest,  witchcral't,  &c,.  •*  and  to  confirm 
its  authenticity,  as  the  king  was  curious  respecting  the 
place,  the  time,  and  the  occasion,  when  the  letter  was 
written,  their  maid  swore  it  was  at  the  countess's  house 
at  Wimbledon,  and  tliat  she  had  written  it  at  the  windoAV 

*  Camden's  "Aunals  of  James  I.,  Kennet  II.,  G52." 


SAGACITY   IN   THE   DISCOVERY   OF   TRUTH.        531 

near  the  upper  end  of  the  great  chamber;  and  that  she 
(the  maid)  was  hid  beneath  the  tapestry,  where  she  heard 
the  conntess  read  over  the  letter  after  writing.  The  king 
appeared  satisfied  with  tliis  new  testimony ;  but,  unex- 
pectedly, he  visited  the  great  chamber  at  Wimbledon, 
observed  the  distance  of  the  window,  jjlaced  himself  be- 
hind the  hangings,  and  made  the  lords  in  their  turn  :  not 
one  could  distinctly  hear  the  voice  of  a  person  placed  at 
the  window.  The  king  further  observed,  that  the  tapes- 
try was  two  feet  short  of  the  ground,  and  that  any  one 
standing  behind  it  must  inevitably  be  discovered.  "  Oaths 
cannot  confound  my  sight,"  exclaimed  the  king.  Having 
also  effectuated  other  discoveries  with  a  confession  of  one 
of  the  parties,  and  Sir  Thomas  Lake  being  a  faithful  servant 
of  James,  as  he  had  been  of  Elizabeth,  the  king,  who 
valued  him,  desired  he  would  not  stand  the  trial  with  his 
wife  and  daughter;  but  the  old  man  pleaded  that  he  was  a 
husband  and  a  father,  and  must  fall  with  them.  "  It  is  a 
fall !"  said  the  king ;  "  your  wife  is  the  serpent ;  your 
daughter  is  Eve ;  and  you,  poor  man,  are  Adam  !"* 

The  sullen  Osborne  reluctantly  says,  "  I  must  confess 
he  was  the  promptest  man  living  in  detecting  an  impos- 
ture." There  was  a  singular  impostor  in  his  reign,  of 
whom  no  one  denies  the  king  the  merit  of  detecting  the 
deception — so  for  was  James  I.  from  being  credulous,  as 
he  is  generally  supposed  to  have  been.  Ridiculous  as  the 
affair  may  appear  to  us,  it  had  perfectly  succeeded  with 
the  learned  fellows  of  Xew  College,  Oxford,  and  after- 
wards with  heads  as  deep ;  and  it  required  some  exertion 
of  the  king's  philosophical  reasoning  to  pronounce  on  the 
deception. 

One  Haddock,  who  was  desirous  of  becoming  a  preach- 

*  The  suit  cost  Sir  Thomas  Lake  30,000Z. ;  the  fiaes  in  the  star-cham- 
ber were  always  heavy  in  all  reigns.  Harris  refers  to  this  cause  as  an 
evidence  of  the  tyrannic  conduct  of  James  I.,  as  if  the  king  was  always 
influenced  by  personal  dislike ;  but  he  does  not  give  the  story. 


532  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

ei*,  but  liad  a  stuttering  and  slowness  of  utterance,  which 
he  could  not  get  rid  of,  took  to  the  study  of  physic ;  but 
recollecting  that,  when  at  Winchester,  his  schoolfellows 
had  told  him  that  he  spoke  fluently  in  his  sleep,  he  tried, 
affecting  to  be  asleep,  to  form  a  discourse  on  physic. 
Finding  that  he  succeeded,  he  continued  the  practice :  he 
then  tried  divinity,  and  spoke  a  good  sermon.  Having 
prepared  one  for  the  purpose,  he  sat  up  in  his  bed  and  de- 
livered it  so  loudly  that  it  attracted  attention  in  the  next 
chamber.  It  was  soon  reported  that  Haddock  preached 
in  his  sleep ;  and  nothing  was  heard  but  inquiries  after 
the  sleeping  preacher^  who  soon  found  it  his  interest  to 
keep  up  the  delusion.  He  was  now  considered  as  a  man 
truly  inspired ;  and  he  did  not  in  his  own  mind  rate  his 
talents  at  less  worth  than  the  first  vacant  bishopric.  He 
was  brought  to  court,  where  the  greatest  personages 
anxiously  sat  up  through  the  night  by  his  bedside.  They 
tried  all  the  maliciousness  of  Puck  to  pinch  and  to  stir  him : 
he  was  without  heai-ing  or  feeling ;  but  they  never  de- 
parted without  an  orderly  text  and  sermon ;  at  the  close 
of  which,  groaning  and  stretching  himself,  he  pretended 
to  awake,  declaring  he  was  imconcious  of  what  had  pass- 
ed. "  The  king,"  says  Wilson,  no  flatterer  of  James, 
"  privately  handled  him  so  like  a  chirurgeon,  that  he  found 
out  the  sore."  The  king  was  present  at  one  of  these  ser- 
mons, and  foi'bade  them ;  and  his  reasonings,  on  this  oc- 
casion, brought  the  sleeping  jjreacher  on  his  knees.  The 
king  observed,  that  things  studied  in  the  day-time  may 
be  dreamed  of  in  the  night,  but  always  irregularly,  with- 
out order ;  not,  as  these  sermons  were,  good  and  learned  : 
as  particularly  the  one  preached  before  his  Majesty  in  his 
sleep — which  he  first  treated  physically,  then  theological- 
ly ;  "  and  I  observed,"  said  the  king,  "  that  he  always 
preaches  best  when  he  has  the  most  crowded  atidience." 
"  Were  he  allowed  to  proceed,  all  slander  and  treason 
might  pass  under  colour  of  being  asleep,"  added  the  king, 


BASILICON  DORON.  533 

who,  notwithstanding  his  pretended  inspiration,  awoke 
the  sleeping  preacher  for  ever  afterwards. 


BASILICON  DORON". 

That  treatise  of  James  I.,  entitled  "  Basilicon  Doron  ; 
or.  His  Majesty's  Instructions  to  his  dearest  Son  Henry  the 
Prince,"  was  composed  by  the  king  in  Scotland,  in  the 
freshness  of  his  studious  days ;  a  Avork,  addressed  to  a 
prince  by  a  monarch  which,  in  some  respects,  could  only 
have  come  from  the  hands  of  such  a  workman.  The  morality 
and  the  politics  often  retain  their  curiosity  and  their 
value.  Our  royal  author  has  drawn  his  principles  of 
government  from  the  classical  volumes  of  antiquity  ;  for 
then  politicians  quoted  Plato,  Aristotle,  and  Cicero. 
His  waters  had,  indeed,  flowed  over  those  beds  of  ore  f 
but  the  growth  and  vigour  of  the  work  comes  from  the 
mind  of  the  king  himself:  he  writes  for  the  Pi'ince  of 
of  Scotland,  and  about  the  Scottish  people.  On  its  first 
appearance  Camden  has  recorded  the  strong  sensation  it 
excited  :  it  was  not  only  admired,  but  it  entered  into  and 
won  the  hearts  of  men.  Harris,  forced  to  acknowledge, 
in  his  mean  style  and  with  his  frigid  temper,  that  "  this 
book  contains  some  tolerable  things,"  omits  not  to  hint 
that  "  it  might  not  be  his  own  :"  but  the  claims  of  James 
I.  are  evident  from  the  peculiarity  of  the  style;  the 
period  at  which  it  was  composed ;  and  by  those  particular 
passages  stamped  with  all  the  individuality  of  the  king 
himself  The  style  is  remarkable  for  its  profuse  sprink- 
ling of  Scottish  and  French  words,  where  the  Doric  plain- 
ness of  the  one,  and  the  intelligent  exj)ression  of  the  other, 

*  James,  early  in  life,  was  a  fine  scholar,  and  a  lover  of  the  ancient 
historians,  as  appears  from  an  accidental  expression  of  Buchanan's, 
in  his  dedication  to  James  of  his  "  Baptistes;"  referring  to  Sallust,  he 
adds,  apud  tutjm  Saltistium 


534  CHARACTER   OB    yAMES   THE   FIRST. 

offer  curious  instances  of  tlie  influence  of  manners  over 
language ;  the  diction  of  the  royal  author  is  a  striking 
evidence  of  the  intermixture  of  the  two  nations,  and  of  a 
court  whicli  had  marked  its  divided  interests  by  its  own 
chequered  language. 

This  royal  manual  still  interests  a  jDhilosophical  mind  ; 
like  one  of  those  antique  and  curious  jjictures  we  some- 
times discover  in  a  cabinet, — studied  for  the  costume ;  yet 
where  the  touches  of  nature  are  true,  although  the 
colouring  is  brown  and  laded  ;  but  there  is  a  force,  and 
sometimes  even  a  charm,  in  the  ancient  simplicity,  to 
which  even  the  delicacy  of  taste  may  return,  not  without 
pleasure.     The  king  tells  his  son  : — 

"  Sith  all  people  are  naturally  inclined  to  follow  their 
prince's  example,  in  your  own  j)erson  make  your  wordes 
and  deedes  to  fight  together ;  and  let  your  own  life  be  a 
law-book  and  a  mirror  to  your  people,  that  therein  they 
may  read  the  practice  of  their  own  lawes,  and  see  by  your 
image  what  life  they  should  lead. 

"  But  vnto  one  faulte  is  all  the  common  people  of  this 
kingdome  subject,  as  well  burgh  as  land ;  which  is,  to 
judge  and  speak  rashly  of  their  prince,  setting  the 
commonwealo  vpon  foure  props,  as  wee  call  it ;  euer 
wearying  of  the  present  estate,  and  desirous  of  nouelties." 
The  remedy  the  king  suggests,  "  besides  the  execution  of 
laws  that  are  to  be  vsed  against  vnreuerent  speakers," 
is  so  to  rule,  as  that  "the  subjects  may  not  only  live  in 
suretie  and  wealth,  but  be  stirred  up  to  open  their 
mouthes  in  your  iust  jiraise." 


JAIMES  THE  FIRST'S  IDEA  OF  A  TYRANT 
AND   A   KING. 

The  royal  autlior  distinguishes  a  king  from  a  tyrant  on 
their  first  entrance  into  the  njovernment  • — 


SIS   IDEA   OF  A  TYRANT   AND  A   KING.  535 

"A  tyrant  will  enter  like  a  saint,  till  he  find  himself 
fast  under  foot,  and  then  will  suft'er  his  unruly  affections 
to  burst  forth."  He  advises  the  prince  to  act  contrary 
to  Nero,  who,  at  first,  "  with  his  tender-hearted  wish, 
vellein  nescire  litei'as,''^  appeared  to  lament  that  he  was  to 
execute  the  laws.  He,  on  the  contrary,  would  have  the 
prince  early  show  "the  severitie  of  justice,  which  will 
settle  the  country,  and  make  them  know  that  ye  can 
strike :  this  would  be  but  for  a  time.  If  otherwise  ye 
kyth  (show)  your  clemencie  at  the  first  the  offences  would 
soon  come  to  such  heapes,  and  the  contempt  of  you  grow 
so  great,  that  Avlien  ye  would  fall  to  punish,  the  number 
to  be  punished  would  exceed  the  innocent ;  and  ye 
would,  against  your  nature,  be  compelled  then  to  wracke 
manic,  whom  the  chastisement  of  few  in  the  beginning 
might  have  preserved.  In  this  my  own  dear-bought 
experience  may  serve  you  for  a  different  lesson.  For  I 
confess,  where  I  thought  (by  being  gracious  at  the 
beginning)  to  gain  all  men's  heart  to  a  loving  and  willing 
obedience,  I  by  the  contrarie  foimd  the  disoi'der  of  the 
countrie,  and  the  loss  of  my  thanks,  to  be  all  my  reward." 

James,  in  the  course  of  the  work,  often  instructs  the 
prince  by  his  own  errors  and  misfortunes  ;  and  certainly 
one  of  these  was  an  excess  of  the  kinder  impulses  in 
granting  favours ;  there  was  nothing  selfish  in  his  happi- 
ness ;  James  seemed  to  wish  that  every  one  around  him 
should  participate  in  the  fulness  of  his  own  enjo^Tuent. 
His  hand  was  always  open  to  scatter  about  him  honours 
and  wealth,  and  not  always  on  unworthy  fiivourites,  but 
often  on  learned  men  whose  talents  he  knew  well  to 
appreciate.  There  was  a  warmth  in  the  king's  temper 
which  once  he  himself  well  described ;  he  did  not  like 
those  who  pride  themselves  on  their  tepid  dispositions 
"  I  love  not  one  that  will  never  be  angry,  for  as  he  that 
is  \vithout  sorrow  is  without  gladness,  so  he  that  is  with- 
out anger  is  without  love.     Give  me  the  heart  of  a  man, 


586  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

and  out  of  that  all  his  actions  shall  be  acceptable."     The 
king  thus  addresses  the  jDi-ince  : — 

On  the  Choice  of  Servants  and  Associates. 

"  Be  not  moved  with  importunities ;  for  the  which 
cause,  as  also  for  augmenting  your  Maiestie,  be  not  so 
facile  of  access-giving  at  all  tiiBcs,  as  I  have  been." — In 
his  minority,  the  choice  of  his  servants  had  been  made  by 
others,  "  recommending  servants  unto  me,  more  for  serv- 
ing, in  effect,  their  friends  that  put  them  in,  than  their 
maister  that  admitted  them,  and  used  them  well,  at  the 
first  rebellion  raised  against  me.  Chuse  you  your  own 
servantes  for  your  own  vse,  and  not  for  the  vse  of  others  ; 
and,  since  ye  must  be  communis  parens  to  all  your  peo- 
ple, chuse  indifferentlie  out  of  all  quarters ;  not  respect- 
ing other  men's  appetites,  but  their  own  qualities.  For  as 
you  must  command  all,  so  reason  would  ye  should  be 
served  of  all. — Be  a  daily  watchman  over  your  own 
servants,  that  they  obey  your  laws  precisely :  for  how 
can  your  laws  be  kept  in  the  country,  if  they  be  broken 
at  your  eare  ! — Bee  homelie  or  strange  with  them,  as  ye 
think  their  behaviour  deserveth  and  their  nature  may 
bear  ill. — Employ  every  man  as  ye  think  him  qualified, 
but  use  not  one  in  all  things,  lest  he  wax  proud,  and  be 
envied  by  his  fellows. — As  for  the  other  sort  of  your 
com])anie  and  servants,  they  ought  to  be  of  jjerfect  age, 
see  they  be  of  a  good  fame ;  otherwise  what  can  the 
people  think  but  that  ye  have  chosen  a  companion  unto 
you  according  to  your  own  humour,  and  so  have  pre- 
ferred those  men  for  the  love  of  their  vices  and  crimes, 
that  ye  knew  them  to  be  guiltie  of  For  the  people,  that 
see  you  not  within,  cannot  judge  of  you  but  according  to 
the  outward  a])pearance  of  your  actions  and  company, 
which  only  is  subject  to  their  sight." 


THE   REVOLUTIONISTS  OF   THAT  AGE.  537 

TIIEREYOLUTIONISTS  OF  THAT  AGE. 

James  I.  has  painted,  with  vivid  touches,  the  Anti- 
Mouarchists,  or  revoUitionists,  of  his  time. 

He  describes  "  their  imagiued  democracie,  where  they 
fed  themselves  with  the  hope  to  become  tribunt  plehi  ; 
and  so,  in  a  popular  government,  by  leading  the  people  by 
tlie  nose,  to  bear  the  sway  of  all  the  rule. — Every  faction," 
he  adds,  "always  joined  them.  I  was  ofttimes  calum- 
niated in  their  poular  sermons,  not  for  any  evill  or  vice  in 
mo,*  but  because  I  was  a  king,  which  they  thought  the 
highest  evill ;  and,  because  they  were  ashamed  to  pro- 
fesse  this  quarrel,  they  were  busie  to  look  naiTOwly  in 
all  my  actions,  pretending  to  distinguish  the  lawfulness 
of  the  office  from  the  vice  of  the  person ;  yet  some  of 
them  would  snapper  out  well  grossly  with  the  trewth  of 
their  intentions,  informing  the  people  that  all  kings  and 
princes  were  naturally  enemies  to  the  liberties  of  the 
Church ;  whereby  the  ignorant  were  emboldened  (as 
bayards), f  to  cry  the  learned  and  modest  out  of  it :  but 
their  parity  is  the  mother  of  confusion,  and  enemie  to 
vnitie,  which  is  the  mother  of  order."  And  it  is  not 
without  eloquence  his  Majesty  describes  these  factious 
Anti-Monarchists,  as  "  Men,  whom  no  deserts  can  oblige, 
neither  oaths  nor  promises  bind ;  breathing  nothing  but 
sedition  and  calumnies,  aspiring  without  measure,  railing 
without  reason,  and  making  their  own  imaginations  the 
square  of  their  conscience.     I  protest,  before  the  great 

*  The  conduct  of  James  I.  in  Scotland  has  even  extorted  praise  from 
one  of  his  bitterest  calumniators ;  for  Mrs.  Macaulay  has  said — "  His 
conduct,  when  King  of  Scotland,  was  in  many  points  unexception- 
able." 

f  An  old  French  word,  expressing,  "  A  man  tliat  gapes  or  gazes 
earnestly  at  a  thing:  a  fly-catcher;  a  greedy  and  unmannerly  be- 
holder."— COTGEAVE. 


538  CHARACTER   OP   JAMES  THE   FIRST. 

God,  and,  since  I  am  here  as  vpon  my  testament,  it  is  no 
place  for  me  to  lie  in,  that  ye  shall  never  find  with  any 
Hie-land,  or  Border  theeves,  greater  ingratitude,  and 
more  lies  and  vile  perjuries:  ye  may  keep  them  for  try. 
ing  your  patience,  as  Socrates  did  an  evill  wife." 


OF  THE  NOBILITY  OF  SCOTLAND. 

The  king  makes  three  great  divisions  of  the  Scottish 
people  :  the  church,  the  nobility,  and  the  burghers. 

Of  the  nobility,  the  king  counsels  the  prince  to  check. 

"A  fectless  arrogant  conceit  of  their  greatness  and 
power,  drinking  in  with  their  very  nourish-milk.  Teach 
your  nobilitie  to  keep  your  lawes,  as  precisely  as  the  mean- 
est ;  fear  not  their  orping,  or  being  discontented,  as  long 
as  ye  rule  well :  for  their  pretended  reformation  of 
princes  taketh  never  efiect,  but  where  evil  government 
I^roceedeth.  Acquaint  yourself  so  with  all  the  honest 
men  of  your  barone  and  gentlemen,  giving  access  so  open 
and  aftable,  to  make  their  own  suites  to  you  themselves? 
and  not  to  employ  the  great  lordes,  their  intercessours ; 
so  shall  ye  bring  to  a  measure  their  monstrous  backes. 
And  for  their  barbarous  feides  (feuds),  put  the  laws  to 
due  execution  made  by  mee  there-anent ;  beginning  ever 
rathest  at  him  that  yee  love  best,  and  is  oblishcd  vnto  you, 
to  make  him  an  example  to  the  rest.  Make  all  your  refor- 
mations to  begin  at  your  elbow,  and  so  by  degrees  to 
the  extremities  of  the  land." 

He  would  not,  however,  that  the  jn-ince  should  highly 
contemn  the  nobility :  "  Remember,  howe  that  error 
brake  the  king,  my  grandfather's  heai't.  Consider  that 
vertue  foUoweth  oftest  noble  blood  :_  the  more  frc(picntly 
tliat  your  court  can  be  garnished  with  them,  as  peers  and 
fathers  of  your  land,  thinke  it  the  more  your  honour." 

Ho  impi'esses  on  the  mind  of  the  prince  ever  to  era- 


OF  COLONISING.— OF  MERCHANTS.  539 

brace  the  quarrel  of  the  poor  and  the  sufierer,  and  to 
remember  the  honourable  title  given  to  his  gi*andfather, 
in  being  called  "  The  poor  man's  king." 


OF   COLOmSING. 

James  I.  had  a  project  of  improving  the  state  of  those 
that  dwelt  in  the  isles,  "  who  are  so  utterly  barbarous," 
by  intermixing  some  of  the  semi-civilised  Highlanders, 
and  2:)lanting  colonies  among  them  of  inland  subjects. 

"  I  have  already  made  laws  against  the  ovei'-lords,  and 
the  chief  of  their  clannes,  and  it  would  be  no  diificultie 
to  danton  them  ;  so  rooting  out,  or  transporting  the  bar- 
barous and  stubborn  sort,  and  planting  civilised  in  their 
rooms." 

This  was  as  wise  a  scheme  as  any  modern  philosopher 
could  have  suggested,  and,  with  the  conduct  he  subse- 
quently pursued  in  Ireland,  may  be  referred  to  as  splen- 
did proofs  of  the  kingly  duties  so  zealously  performed  by 
this  monarch. 


OF  MERCHANTS. 

Of  merchants,  as  this  king  understood  the  commercial 
character,  he  had  no  honourable  notion. 

He  says,  "  They  think  the  w^hole  commonwealth  or- 
dained for  raising  them  u^),  and  accounting  it  their  law- 
ful gain  to  enrich  themselves  upon  the  losses  of  the  rest 
of  the  people." 

We  are  not  to  censure  James  I.  for  his  principles  of 
political  economy,  which  then  had  not  assumed  the  dig- 
nity of  a  science ;  his  rude  and  simple  ideas  convey  popu' 
lar  truths. 


540  CHARACTER  OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 


REGULATIONS  FOR  THE  PRINCE'S  MANNERS 
AND  HABITS. 

The  last  portion  of  the  "  Basilicon  Doron  "  is  devoted 
to  domestic  regulations  for  the  prince,  respecting  his 
manners  and  habits ;  which  the  king  calls  "  the  indifferent 
actions  of  a  man." 

"  A  king  is  set  as  one  on  a  stage,  whose  smallest 
actions  and  gestures  all  the  people  gazinglie  do  behold  ; 
and,  however  just  in  the  discharge  of  his  office,  yet,  if  his 
Dehaviour  be  light  or  dissolute,  in  indifferent  actions,  the 
people,  who  see  but  the  outward  part,  conceive  pre-occu- 
pied  conceits  of  the  king's  inward  intention,  which, 
although  Avith  time,  the  trier  of  truth,  will  evanish  by 
the  evidence  of  the  contrarie  effect  yet  interim  patitur 
Justus,  and  pre-judged  conceits  will,  in  the  meantime, 
breed  contempt,  the  mother  of  rebellion  and  disorder. 
Besides,"  the  king  adds,  "the  indifferent  actions  and 
behaviour  of  a  man  have  a  certain  holding  and  depend- 
ence upon  vcrtue  or  vice,  according  as  they  are  used  or 
ruled." 

The  prince  is  not  to  kee]^  regular  hours. 

"  That  any  time  in  the  four  and  twentie  hours  may  be 
alike  to  you ;  thereby  your  diet  may  be  accommodated 
to  your  affairs,  and  not  your  affairs  to  your  diet." 

The  prince  is  to  oat  in  p\iblic,  "  to  shew  that  he  loves 
not  to  haunt  companic,  which  is  one  of  tlie  marks  of  a 
tyrant,  and  that  he  delights  not  to  eat  privatelie,  ashamed 
of  liis  gluttonie."  As  a  curious  instance  of  the  manners 
of  the  times,  the  king  advises  the  prince  "  to  use  mostly 
to  eat  of  reasonablie-grosse  and  common-meats ;  not  only 
for  making  your  bodie  strong  for  travel,  as  that  ye  may 
be  the  hartlier  received  by  your  meane  subiects  in  their 
houses,  when  their  clicere  may  suffice  you,  which  other- 


THE  PRINCE'S   MANNERS  AND   HABITS.  g-tl 

waies  would  be  imputed  to  you  for  pride,  and  breed  cold- 
ness and  disdain  in  them." 

I  have  noticed  his  counsel  against  the  pedantry  or  other 
affectations  of  style  in  speaking. 

He  adds,  "  Let  it  be  plaine,  natural,  coraelie,  cleane, 
short,  and  sententious." 

In  his  gestures  "he  is  neither  to  look  sillily,  like  a 
stupid  pedant ;  nor  unsettledly,  with  an  uncouth  morgue, 
like  a  new-come-over  cavalier ;  not  over  sparing  in  your 
courtesies,  for  that  Avill  be  imputed  to  incivilitie  and  ar- 
rogance ;  nor  yet  over  prodigal  in  jowking  or  nodding  at 
every  step,  for  that  forme  of  being  popular  becometh  bet- 
ter aspiring  Absaloms  than  lawful  kings  ;  forming  ever 
your  gesture  according  to  your  present  action ;  looking 
gravely,  and  with  a  majestic,  when  ye  sit  upon  judgment, 
or  give  audience  to  embassadors  ;  homely,  when  ye  are 
in  private  with  your  own  servants ;  merrily,  when  ye  are 
at  any  pastime,  or  merry  discourse  ;  and  let  your  counte- 
nance smell  of  courage  and  magnanimity  Avhen  at  the 
warres.  And  remember  (I  say  again)  to  be  plaine  and 
sensible  in  your  language ;  for  besides,  it  is  the  tongue's 
office  to  be  the  messenger  of  the  mind  ;  it  may  be  thought 
a  point  of  imbecilitie  of  spirit  in  a  king  to  speak  obscurely, 
much  more  untrewely,  as  if  he  stood  in  awe  of  any  in 
uttering  his  thoughts." 

Should  the  prince  incline  to  be  an  author,  the  king  adds — 

"  If  your  engme  (genius)  spur  you  to  write  any  workes, 
either  in  prose  or  verse,  I  cannot  but  allow  you  to  prac- 
tise it ;  but  take  no  longsome  works  in  hande,  for  distract- 
ing you  from  your  calling." 

He  reminds  the  prince  with  dignity  and  truth, 

"  Your  writes  (writings)  will  remain  as  the  true  pic-, 
ture  of  your  minde,  to  all  posterities ;  if  yee  would  write 
worthelie,  chuse  subjects  worthie  of  you."  His  critical 
conception  of  the  nature  of  poetry  is  its  best  definition. 
"  If  ye  write   in  verse,   remember   that    it  is   not    the 


542  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

principal  part  of  a  poem  to  rime  right,  and  flow  well  with 
many  prettie  wordes ;  but  the  chief  commendation  of  a 
poem  is,  that  when  the  verse  shall  bee  taken  sundry  in 
prose,  it  shall  be  found  so  ritch  in  quick  inventions  and 
poetick  floures,  and  in  fair  and  pertinent  comparisons, 
as  it  shall  retain  the  lustre  of  a  poem  although  in  prose." 

The  king  proceeds,  touching  many  curious  points  con- 
cerning the  prince's  bodily  exercises  and  "  house-pas- 
times." A  genuine  picture  of  the  customs  and  manners 
of  the  age :  our  royal  author  had  the  eye  of  an  observer, 
and  the  thoughtfulness  of  a  sage. 

The  king  closes  with  the  hope  that  the  prince's  "  natural 
mclination  will  have  a  happie  simpathie  with  these  pre- 
cepts ;  making  the  wise  man's  schoolmaister,  which  is  the 
example  of  others,  to  be  your  teacher  ;  and  not  that  over- 
late  repentance  by  your  own  experience,  which  is  the 
schoolmaister  of  fools." 

Thus  have  I  opened  the  book,  and  I  believe,  the  heart 
of  James  I.  The  volume  remains  a  perpetual  witness  to 
posterity  of  the  iatellectual  capacity  and  the  noble  disposi- 
tion of  the  royal  author. 

But  this  monarcli  has  been  unfairly  reproached  both 
by  the  political  and  religious ;  as  far  as  these  aspersi-  'US 
connect  themselves  with  his  character,  they  enter  into  our 
inquiry. 

His  speeches  and  his  writings  are  perpetually  quoted 
by  democratic  writers,  with  the  furious  zeal  of  those  who 
are  doing  the  work  of  a  party  ;  they  never  separate  the 
character  of  James  from  his  speculative  principles 
of  government ;  and,  such  is  the  odium  they  have  raised 
against  him,  that  this  sovereign  has  received  the  execra- 
tion, or  the  ridicule,  even  of  those  who  do  not  belong 
to  their  party.  James  maintained  certain  abstract  doc- 
trines of  the  times,  and  had  written  on  "  Tlie  Preroga- 
tive Royal,"  and  "  The  Trew  Laws  of  Freo  Monarcliies," 
as  he  had  on  witches  and  devils.     All  this  verbal  despot- 


THE  KING'S  IDEA  OP  ROYAL  PREROGATIVE.       543 

ism  is  artfully  converted  into  so  many  acts  of  despotism 
itself;  and  thus  they  contrive  their  dramatic  exhibition 
of  a  blustering  tyrant,  in  the  person  of  a  father  of  his  peo- 
ple, who  exercised  his  power  without  an  atom  of  brutal 
despotism  adhering  to  it. 

THE  KIXG'S  IDEA   OF  THE  ROYAL  PRE- 
ROGATIVE. 

TVhex  James  asserted  that  a  king  is  above  the  laws,  he 
did  not  understand  this  in  the  popular  sense ;  nor  was 
he  the  inventor  or  the  reviver  of  similar  doctrines.  In 
all  his  mysterious  flights  on  the  nature  of  "The  Pre- 
rogative Royal,"  James  only  maintained  what  Elizabeth 
and  all  the  Tudors  had,  as  jealously,  but  more  energetic- 
ally exercised.*  Elizabeth  left  to  her  successor  the 
royal  prerogative  strained  to  its  highest  pitch,  with  no 
means  to  support  a  throne  which  in  the  succeeding  reign 
was  found  to  be  baseless.  The  king  employed  the  style 
of  absolute  power,  and,  as  Harris  says,  "  entertained  no- 
tions of  his  prerogative  amazingly  great,  and  bordering 
on  impiety."  It  never  occun-ed  to  his  calumniators,  who 
are  always  writing,  without  throwing  themselves  back 
into  the  age  of  their  inquiries,  that  all  the  political  rever- 
ies, the  abstract  notions,  and  the  metaphysical  fancies  of 
James   I.   arose   from  his   studious   desire   of  being   an 

*  In  Sir  Symund  D'Ewes's  "Journals  of  the  Parliament,"  and  in 
Townshend's  "  Historical  Collections,"  we  trace  in  some  degree  Eliza^ 
betli's  arbitrary  power  concealed  in  her  prerogative,  which  she  always 
considered  as  the  dissolving  charm  in  the  magical  circle  of  our  consti- 
tution. But  I  possess  two  letters  of  the  French  ambassador  to  Charles 
IX.,  written  from  our  court  in  her  reign;  who,  by  means  of  his  secret 
intercourse  with  those  about  her  person,  details  a  curious  narrative 
of  a  royal  interview  granted  to  some  deputies  of  the  parliament,  at 
that  moment  refractory,  strongly  depicting  the  exalted  notions  this 
great  sovereign  entertained  of  the  prerogative,  and  which  she  asserted 
in  stamping  her  foot 


544:  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

English  sovereign,  accoxxling  to  the  English  constitution 
— for  from  thence  he  derived  those  very  ideas. 


THE  LAWYERS'  IDEA  OF  THE  ROYAL 
PREROGATIVE. 

The  truth  is,  that  lawyers,  in  their  anxiety  to  define,  or 
to  defend  the  shadowy  limits  of  the  royal  prerogative, 
had  contrived  some  strange  and  clumsy  fictions  to  de- 
scribe its  powers;  their  flatteries  of  the  imaginary  being, 
whom  they  called  the  sovereign,  are  more  monstrous  than 
all  the  harmless  abstractions  of  James  I. 

They  describe  an  English  sovereign  as  a  mysterious 
being,  invested  with  absolute  perfection,  and  a  fabulous 
immortality,  whose  person  was  inviolable  by  its  sacred- 
ness.  A  king  of  England  is  not  subject  to  death,  since 
the  sovereign  is  a  corporation,  expressed  by  the  awful 
plural  the  cub  and  the  we.  His  majesty  is  always  of 
full  age,  though  in  infancy ;  and  so  unlike  mortality,  the 
king  can  do  no  wrong.  Such  his  ubiquity,  that  lie  acts 
at  the  same  moment  in  different  places ;  and  such  the 
force  of  his  testimony,  that  whatever  the  sovereign  de- 
clares to  have  passed  in  his  presence,  becomes  instantly 
a  perpetual  record ;  he  serves  for  his  own  witness,  by 
the  simple  subscription  of  Teste  me  ipso  /  and  he  is  so 
absolute  in  power,  beyond  the  laws,  that  he  quashes  them 
by  his  negative  voice.*  Such  was  the  origin  of  the  theo- 
retical prerogative  of  an  ideal  sovereign  which  James  I. 

*  Such  aro  tho  descriptions  of  the  British  sovereign,  to  be  found  in 
Cowell's  curious  book,  entitled  "  Tho  Interpreter."  Tho  reader  may 
furtlier  trace  the  modern  genius  of  Blackstono,  witli  an  awful  reverence, 
dignifying  the  venerable  nonsense — and  tho  commentator  on  Black- 
stone  sometimes  labouring  to  explain  the  explanations  of  his  master  ; 
so  obscure,  so  abstract,  and  so  delicate  is  tlie  phantom  which  our  an- 
cient lawyers  conjured  up,  and  which  the  moderns  cannot  lay. 


LAWYERS'  IDEA  OF  ROYAL  PREROGATIVE.        5J-5 

had  formed :  it  was  a  mere  curious  abstraction  of  the 
schools  in  the  spirit  of  the  age,  which  was  perpetually 
referring  to  the  mysteries  of  state  and  the  secrets  of 
empires,  and  not  a  principle  he  was  practising  to  the  det- 
riment of  the  subject. 

James  I.  while  he  held  for  his  first  principle  that  a  sover- 
eign is  only  accountable  to  God  for  tlie  sins  of  his  govern- 
ment, an  harmless  and  even  a  noble  principle  in  a  reli- 
gious prince,  at  various  times  acknowledged  that  "  a  king 
is  ordained  for  procuring  the  prosperity  of  his  people." 
In  his  speech,  1603,  he  says, 

"  If  you  be  rich  I  cannot  be  poor ;  if  you  be  happy  I 
cannot  but  be  fortunate.  My  worldly  felicity  consists  in 
your  prosperity.  And  that  I  am  a  servant  is  most  true, 
as  I  am  a  head  and  governour  of  all  the  people  in  my 
dominions.  If  we  take  the  people  as  one  body,  then  aa 
the  head  is  ordained  for  the  body  and  not  the  body  for 
the  head,  so  must  a  righteous  king  know  himself  to  be 
ordained  for  his  people,  and  not  his  people  for  him." 

The  truth  is  always  concealed  by  those  writers  who 
are  cloaking  their  antipathy  against  monarchy,  in  their 
declamations  against  the  writings  of  James  L  Authors, 
who  are  so  often  influenced  by  the  opinions  of  their  age, 
have  the  melancholy  privilege  of  perpetuating  them,  and 
of  being  cited  as  authorities  for  those  very  opinions, 
however  erroneous. 

At  this  time  the  true  prii^  iples  of  popular  liberty, 
hidden  in  the  constitution,  were  yet  obscure  and  con- 
tested ;  involved  in  contradiction,  in  assertion  and  recan- 
tation ;  *  and  they  have  been  established  as  much  by  the 

*  Cowell,  equally  learned  and  honest,  involved  himself  in  contradict- 
ory positions,  and  was  alike  prosecuted  by  the  King  and  the  Commons, 
on  opposite  principles.  The  overbearing  Coke  seems  to  have  aimed  at 
his  life,  which  the  lenity  of  James  saved.  His  work  is  a  testimony  of 
the  unsettled  principles  of  liberty  at  that  time ;  Cowell  was  compelled 
to  appeal  to  one  part  of  his  book  to  save  himself  from  the  other. 
35 


5-iG  CHARACTER   OP  JAMES    THE   FIRST. 

"blood  as  by  the  ink  of  our  patriots.  Some  noble  spiiita 
in  the  Commons  were  then  struggling  to  fix  the  vacilla- 
ting pi'inciples  of  our  government ;  but  often  their  pri- 
vate passions  were  infused  into  their  public  feelings; 
James,  who  was  apt  to  imagine  that  these  individuals 
were  instigated  by  a  personal  enmity  in  aiming  at  his 
mysterious  prerogative,  and  at  the  same  time  found  their 
rivals  with  equal  weight  opposing  the  novel  opinions, 
retreated  still  farther  into  the  dej^ths  and  arcana  of  the 
constitution.  Modern  writers  have  viewed  the  political 
fancies  of  this  monarch  through  optical  instruments  not 
invented  in  his  days. 

When  Sir  Edward  Coke  declared  that  the  king's  royal 
prerogative  being  unlimited  and  undefined,  "  was  a  great 
overgrown  monster ;"  and,  on  one  occasion,  when  Coke 
said  before  the  king,  that  "his  Majesty  was  defended  by 
the  laws," — James,  in  anger,  told  him  he  spoke  foolishly, 
and  he  said  he  was  not  defended  by  the  laws,  but  by  God 
(alluding  to  his  "  divine  right ")  ;  and  sharply  reprimand- 
ed him  for  having  spoken  irrevei-ently  of  Sir  Thomas 
Crompton,  a  civilian  ;  asserting,  that  Crompton  was  as 
good  a  man  as  Coke.  The  fact  is,  there  then  existed  a 
rivalry  between  the  civil  and  the  common  lawyers.  Coke 
declared  that  the  common  law  of  England  was  in  immi- 
nent danger  of  being  perverted  ;  that  law  which  he  has 
enthusiastically  described  as  the  perfection  of  all  sense 
and  experience.  Coke  was  strenuously  opposed  by  Lord 
Bacon  and  by  the  civilians,  and  was  at  length  comnnttcd 
to  the  Tower  (according  to  a  MS.  letter  of  the  day,  for 
the  cause  is  obscure  in  our  history),  "  charged  with  speak- 
ing so  in  parliament  as  tended  to  stir  up  the  subjects' 
liearts    against   their  sovereign."*     Yet   in   all  this  we 

*  Tho  following^  anecdotes  of  Lord  Chief  Justice  Coke  liave  not  been 
publiKliod.  They  are  extracts  from  maimseript  letters  of  tho  times: 
on  tliat  occasion,  at  fii'st,  the  patriot  did  not  conduct  liimsclf  with  tho 
firmness  of  a  groat  spirit. 


LAWYERS'  IDEA  OF  ROYAL  PEEROGATIYE.        54-7 

must  not  regard  James  as  the  despot  lie  is  represented : 
be  acted  as  Elizabotli  would  have  acted,  for  the  sacred- 
ness  of  his  own  person,  and  the  integrity  of  the  constitu- 

Nov.  19,  1616. 
"  The  thunderbolt  hath  fallen  on  the  Lord  Coke,  which  hath  overlhrowD 
him  from  the  veiy  roots.  Tlie  supersedeas  was  carried  to  him  by  Sir 
George  Coppin,  who,  at  the  presenting  of  it,  received  it  with  dejection 
and  tears.  Tremor  et  sxiccessio  non  cadunt  in  forkm  et  constardem.  I 
send  you  a  distich  on  the  Lord  Coke — 

Jus  condere  Cocus  potnit,  sc-d  condere  jure 
Non  potuit ;  potuit  condere  jura  cocis." 

It  happened  that  the  name  of  Coke,  or  rather  Cook,  admitted  of 
being  punned  on,  both  in  Latin  and  in  English  ;  for  he  was  lodged  in 
the  Tower,  in  a  room  than  had  once  been  a  kitchen,  and  as  soon  as  he 
arrived,  one  had  written  on  the  door,  which  he  read  at  his  entrance — • 

"  This  room  has  long  wanted  a  Cook." 

"  The  Prince  interceding  lately  for  Edward  Coke,  his  Majesty  an- 
swered, •  He  knew  no  such  man.'  When  tlie  Prince  interceded  by  the 
name  of  Mr.  Coke,  his  Majesty  still  answered,  '  He  knew  none  of  that 
mme  neither  ;  but  he  knew  there  was  one  Captain  Coke,  the  leader  of 
the  faction  in  parliament.'  " 

In  another  letter.  Coke  appears  with  greater  dignity.  When  Lord 
Arundel  was  sent  by  the  king  to  Coke,  a  prisoner  in  the  Tower,  to  in- 
form him  that  his  ilajesty  would  allow  him  to  consult  witli  eight  of  the 
best  learned  in  the  law  to  advise  him  for  his  cause,  Coke  thanked  the 
king,  but  he  knew  himself  to  be  accounted  to  have  as  much  skill  in 
the  law  as  any  man  in  England,  and  therefore  needed  no  such  help, 
nor  feared  to  be  judged  by  the  law.  He  knew  his  Majesty  might  easily 
find,  in  such  a  one  as  he,  whereby  to  take  away  his  head ;  but  for  this 
he  feared  not  what  could  be  said. 

"I  have  heard  you  affirm,"  said  Lord  Arundel,  "  that  by  law,  he 
that  should  go  about  to  withdraw  the  subjects'  hearts  from  their  king 
was  a  traitor."  Sir  Edward  answered,  "  That  he  held  him  an  arch- 
traitor." 

James  I.  said  of  Coke,  "  That  he  had  so  many  shifts  that,  throw  him 
where  you  would,  ho  still  fell  upon  his  legs." 

This  affair  ended  with  putting  Sir  Edward  Coke  on  his  knees  before 
the  council-table,  w-ith  an  order  to  retire  to  a  private  life,  to  correct  his 
book  of  Reports,  and  occasionally  to  consult  the  king  himself.  This 
part  of  Coke's  history  is  fully  opened  in  Mr.  Alexander  Chalmers'3 
"  Biographical  Dictionary." 


548  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

tion.  In  the  same  manuscript  letter  I  find  that,  when  at 
Theobalds,  the  king,  with  his  usnal  openness,  was  discours- 
ing how  he  designed  to  govern  ;  and  as  he  would  some- 
times, like  the  wits  of  all  nations  and  times,  compress  an 
argument  into  a  play  on  words, — the  king  said,  "  I  will 
govern  according  to  the  good  of  the  common-weal,  but 
not  accordinsf  to  the  commo7i-will P^ 


THE  KING'S    ELEVATED   CONCEPTION  OF 
THE  KINGLY    CHARACTER. 

But  what  were  the  real  thoughts  and  feelings  of  this  pre- 
sumed despot  concerning  the  duties  of  a  sovereign  ?  His 
Platonic  conceptions  inspired  the  most  exalted  feelings  ; 
but  his  gentle  nature  never  led  to  one  act  of  unfeeling 
despotism.  His  sceptre  was  wreathed  with  the  roses  of 
his  fancy :  the  iron  of  arbitrary  power  only  struck  into  the 
heart  in  the  succeeding  reign.  James  only  menaced  with 
an  abstract  notion  ;  or,  in  anger,  Avith  his  own  hand  would 
tear  out  a  protestation  from  the  journals  of  the  Commons  : 
and,  when  he  considered  a  man  as  past  forgiveness,  he  con- 
demned him  to  a  slight  imprisonment ;  or  removed  him 
to  a  distant  employment ;  or,  if  an  author,  like  Coke  and 
Cowell,  sent  him  into  retirement  to  correct  his  works. 

In  a  great  court  of  judicature,  when  the  interference  of 
the  royal  authority  was  ardently  solicited,  the  magnani- 
mous monarch  replied  : — 

"Kings  ruled  by  their  laws,  as  God  did  by  the  laws  of 
nature;  and  ought  as  rarely  to  put  in  use  their  supreme 
authority  as  God  does  his  power  of  working  miracles." 

Notwithstanding  his  abstract  principles,  his  knowledge 
and  reflection  showed  him  that  there  is  a  crisis  in  mon- 
archies and  a  period  in  empires ;  and  in  discriminating 
between  a  king  and  a  tyrant,  he  tells  the  prince — 

"  A  tyranne's  miserable  and  infamous  life  armeth  in  end 


CONCEPTION   OF   THE   KINGLY   CHARACTER.       51-9 

his  own  subjects  to  become  his  burreaux ;  and  altliough 
this  rebellion  be  ever  unlawful  on  their  part,  yet  is  the 
world  so  wearied  of  him,  that  his  fall  is  little  meaned 
(minded)  by  the  rest  of  his  subiects,  and  smiled  at  by  his 
neighbours." 

And  he  desires  that  the  prince,  his  son,  should  so  per- 
form his  royal  duties,  that,  "  In  case  ye  fall  in  the  high- 
way, yet  it  should  be  with  the  honourable  report  and 
just  regret  of  all  honest  men."  In  the  dedicatory  sonnet 
to  Prince  Henry  of  the  "  Basilicon  Doron,"  in  verses  not 
without  elevation,  James  admonishes  the  prince  to 

Represse  the  proud,  raaiutainiag  aye  the  right; 

Walk  always  so,  as  ever  in  his  sight, 

Wiio  guards  the  godly,  plaguing  the  prophane. 

The  poems  of  James  I.  are  the  versifications  of  a  man 
of  learning  and  meditation.  Such  an  one  could  not  fail 
of  producing  lines  which  reflect  the  mind  of  their  author. 
I  find  in  a  MS.  these  couplets,  which  condense  an  im- 
j>ressive  thought  on  a  favourite  subject : — 

Crowues  have  their  compassa,  length  of  daies  their  date, 
Triumphs  their  tombes,  Fclicitie  her  fate; 
Of  more  than  earth,  can  earth  malce  none  partaker; 
But  knowledge  makes  the  king  most  like  his  Maker.* 

These  are  among  the  elevated  conceptions  the  king  had 
formed  of  the  character  of  a  sovereign,  and  the  feeling 
was  ever  present  in  his  mind.  James  has  preserved  an 
anecdote  of  Henry  VIIL,  in  commenting  on  it,  which 
serves  our  purpose  : — 

"  It  was  strange,"  said  James  I.,  "  to  look  into  the  life 
of  Henry  VIIL,  how  like  an  epicure  he  lived !  Henry 
once  asked,  whether  he  might  be  saved  ?  He  was  an- 
swered,'That  he  had  no  cause  to  fear,  having  lived  so 
mighty  a  king.'  '  Bat  oh  !'  said  he,'  I  have  lived  too  like  a 

*"Harl.  MSS.,"  6824. 


i)50  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   TLIE   FIRST. 

king.'  He  should  I'atlier  have  said,  not  like  a  king — for 
the  office  of  a  king  is  to  do  justice  and  equity ;  but  he  only 
served  his  sensuality,  like  a  beast." 

Henry  VII.  was  the  favourite  character  of  James  I. ' 
and  it  was  to  gratify  the  king  that  Lord  Bacon  wrote  the 
life  of  this  wise  and  prudent  monarch.  It  is  remarkable 
of  James  I.,  that  he  never  mentioned  the  name  of  Eliza- 
beth without  some  expressive  epithet  of  reverence ;  such 
as,  "The  late  queen  of  famous  memory ;"  a  circumstance 
not  common  among  kings,  who  do  not  like  to  remind  the 
world  of  the  reputation  of  a  great  predecessor.  But  it 
suited  the  generous  temper  of  that  man  to  extol  the 
greatness  he  admired,  whose  philosophic  toleration  was 
often  known  to  have  pardoned  the  libel  on  himself  for  the 
redeeming  virtue  of  its  epigram.  In  his  forgiving  temper, 
James  I.  would  call  such  efiusions  "  the  superfluities  of 
idle  brains." 


"THE  BOOK  OF   SPORTS." 

But  while  the  mild  government  of  this  monarch  has  been 
covered  with  the  political  odium  of  arbitrary  power,  he 
has  also  incurred  a  relisfious  one,  from  his  desis^u  of  ren- 
dering  the  Sabbath  a  day  for  the  poor  alike  of  devotion 
and  enjoyment,  hitherto  practised  in  England,  as  it  is  still 
throughout  Europe.  Plays  were  performed  on  Sundays 
at  court,  in  Elizabeth's  reign ;  and  yet,  "  the  Protestants 
of  Elizabeth"  was  the  usual  expressive  phrase  to  mark 
those  who  did  most  honour  to  the  reformed.  The  king, 
returning  from  Scotland,  found  the  people  in  Lancashire 
discontented,  from  the  unusual  deprivation  of  their  popu- 
lar recreations  on  Sundays  and  holidays,  after  the  church 
service.  "  With  our  own  ears  we  heard  the  general  com- 
plaint of  our  peoi)le."  The  Catholic  priests  were  busily 
insinuating  among  the  lower  orders  that  the  reformed 
religion  was  a  sullen  de2)rivation  of  all  mirth  and  social 


"THE  BOOK  OF  SPORTS.  551 

amusements,  and  thus  "  turning  the  people's  hearts."  But 
while  they  were  denied  what  the  king  terms  lawful  rec- 
reations,"* they  had  substituted  more  vicious  ones  :  ale- 
houses were  more  frequented — drunkenness  more  generae- 
— tale-mongery  and  sedition,  the  vices  of  sedentary  idle- 
ness, prevailed — while  a  fanatical  gloom  was  s^Jreadiug 
over  the  country. 

Tlie  king,  whose  gaiety  of  temper  mstantly  sympa- 
thised with  the  multitude,  and  perhaps  alarmed  at  this 
neV  shape  which  puritanism  was  assuming,  published  what 
is  called  "  The  Book  of  Sports,"  and  which  soon  obtained 
the  contemptuous  term  of  "  The  Dancing  Book." 

On  this  subject  our  recent  jjrinciples  have  governed  our 
decisions  i  with  our  habits  formed,  and  our  notions  final- 
ly adjusted,  this  singular  state-paper  has  been  reprobated 
by  piety  ;  Avhose  zeal,  however,  is  not  sufficiently  histori- 
cal. It  was  one  of  the  state  maxims  of  this  philosophic 
monarch,  in  his  advice  to  his  son, 

"  To  allure  the  common  people  to  a  common  amitie 
among  themselves;  and  that  certain  dales  in  the  yeere 
should  be  appointed  for  delighting  the  people  Avith  public 
spectacles  of  all  honest  games  and  exercise  of  arms; 
making  playes  and  lawful  games  in  Male,  and  good 
cheare  at  Christmas ;  as  also  for  convening  of  neigh- 
bours, for  entertaining  friendship  and  heartliness,  by  hon- 
est feasting  and  merriness ;  so  that  the  sabbothes  be  kept 
holie,  and  no  unlawful  pastime  be  used.  This  form  of 
contenting  the  people's  minds  hath  been  used  in  all  well- 
governed  republics." 

James,  therefore,  was  shocked  at  the  sudden  melancholy 
among  the  people.  In  Europe,  even  among  the  reformed 
themselves,    the   Sabbath,   after   church-service,    was    a 

*  These  are  enumerated  to  consist  of  dancing,  archery,  leaping, 
vaulting,  Maj'-games,  Whitsun-ales,  Morris-dances,  and  the  setting  up 
of  Maj -poles,  and  other  mauly  sports. 


552  CHARACTES  OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

festival-day ;  and  the  wise  monarch  could  discover  no 
reason  why,  in  his  kingdom,  it  should  prove  a  day  of 
penance  and  self-denial :  but  when  once  this  unlucky 
"  Book  of  Sports  "  was  thrown  among  the  nation,  they 
discovered,  to  their  own  astonishment,  that  everything 
concerninsr  the  nature  of  the  Sabbath  was  uncertain. 


THE  SABBATARIAN  CONTROVERSY. 

And,  because  they  knew  nothing,  they  wrote  much.  The 
controversy  was  carried  to  an  extremity  in  the  succeeding 
reign.  The  proper  hour  of  the  Sabbath  was  not  agreed 
on  :  Was  it  to  commence  on  the  Saturday-eve  ?  Others 
thought  that  time,  having  a  cii'cular  motion,  the  point  we 
begin  at  was  not  important,  provided  the  due  portion  be 
completed.  Another  declared,  in  his  "  Sunday  no  Sab- 
bath," that  it  was  merely  an  ecclesiastical  day  which  may 
be  changed  at  pleasure ;  as  they  were  about  doing  it,  in 
the  Church  of  Geneva,  to  Thursday, — probably  from 
their  antipathy  to  the  Catholic  Sunday,  as  the  early  Chris- 
tians had  anciently  changed  it  from  the  Jewish  Satiirday. 
This  had  taken  place,  had  the  Thursday  voters  not  formed 
the  minority.  Another  asserted,  that  Sunday  was  a  work- 
ing day,  and  that  Saturday  was  the  perpetual  Sabbath.* 
Some  deemed  the  very  name  of  Sunday  profaned  the 
Christian  mouth,  as  allusive  to  the  Saxon  idolatry  of 
that  day  being  dedicated  to  the  Sun  ;  and  hence  they 
sanctified  it  Avith  the  "  Lord's-day."  Others  Avere  stren- 
uous advocates  for  closely  copying  the  austerity  of  the 
Jewish  Sabbath,  in  all  the  rigour  of  tlie  Levitical  law ; 
forbidding  meat  to  be  dressed,  houses  swept,  tires  kindled, 
&c., — the  day  of  rest  was  to  be  a  day  of  mortification. 
But  this  spread  an  alarm,  that  "  the  old  rotten  ceremonial 

♦Collioi'a  "Ecclesiastical  History,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  758. 


THE  SAIBATARIAN  CONTROVERSY.  555 

law  of  the  Jews,  which  had  been  buried  in  the  grave  of 
Jesus,"  was  about  to  be  revived.  And  so  prone  is  man 
to  the  reaction  of  opinion,  that,  from  observing  the  Sab- 
bath with  a  Judaic  austerity,  some  were  for  rejecting 
*' Lord's-days "  altogether;  asserting,  they  needed  not 
any ;  because,  in  their  elevated  holiness,  all  days  to  them 
were  Lord's-days.*  A  popular  preacher  at  the  Temple, 
who  was  disposed  to  keep  alive  a  cheerful  spirit  among 
the  people,  yet  desirous  that  the  sacred  day  should  not 
pass  like  any  other,  moderated  between  the  parties.  He 
declared  it  was  to  be  observed  with  strictness  only  by 
"  persons  of  quality."! 

One  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  civil  war  is  traced  to 

♦Fuller's  "Church  History,"  book  xi.,  p.  149.  One  of  the  most 
curious  books  of  this  class  is  Heylin's  "History  of  the  Sabbath,"  a 
work  abounding  with  uncommon  researches;  it  was  written  in  favour 
of  Charles's  declaration  for  reviving  lawful  sports  on  Sundays.  Warton, 
in  the  first  edition  of  Milton's  "Juvenile  Poems,"  observed  in  a  note  on 
the  Lady's  speech,  in  Comus,  verse  177,  that  "it  is  owing  to  the  Puri- 
tans ever  since  Cromwell's  time  that  Sunday  has  been  made  in  England 
a  day  of  gravity  and  severity  :  and  many  a  staunch  observer  of  the  rite3 
of  the  Church  of  England  little  suspects  that  he  is  conforming  to  the 
Caldnism  of  an  Englit^h  Sunday^  It  is  probable  this  gave  unjust  of- 
fence to  grave  heads  unfurnished  with  their  ovra.  national  history,  for 
in  the  second  edition  Warton  cancelled  the  note.  Truth  is  thus  violated. 
The  Puritans,  disgusted  with  the  levities  and  excesses  of  the  age  of 
James  and  Charles,  as  is  usual  on  these  points,  vehemently  threw 
themselves  into  an  opposite  direction;  but  they  perhaps  advanced  too 
far  in  converting  the  Sabbath-day  into  a  sullen  and  gloomy  reserve  of 
Pharisaical  austerity.  Adam  Smith,  and  Paley,  in  his  "  Moral  and  Po- 
litical Philosophy,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  73,  have  taken  more  enlightened  views  on 
this  subject. 

f  "Let  servants,"  he  says,  "whose  hands  are  ever  working,  whilst 
their  eyes  are  waking;  let  such  who  all  the  foregoing  week  had  their 
cheeks  moistened  with  sweat,  and  their  hands  hardened  with  labour, 
let  such  have  some  recreation  on  the  Lord's-day  indulged  to  them  \ 
whilst  persons  of  qiuility,  who  may  be  said  to  keep  Sabbath  all  the 
week  long — I  mean,  who  rest  from  hard  labour — are  concerned  in  con- 
Bcience  to  observe  the  Lord's-day  with  the  greater  abstinence  from  reo 
reations." 


554  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

the  revival  of  this  "  Book  of  Sports."  Thus  it  happened 
that  from  the  circumstance  of  our  good-tempered  monarch 
discovering  the  populace  iu  Lancashire  discontented, 
being  debarred  from  their  rustic  sports — ^and,  exhorting 
them,  out  of  his  honhcnnie  and  "  fatherly  love,  which  he 
owed  to  them  all "  (as  he  said),  to  recover  their  cheerful 
habits — he  was  innocently  involving  the  country  in  divin- 
ity and  in  civil  war.  James  I.  would  have  started  with 
horror  at  the  "  Book  of  Sports,"  could  he  have  presciently 
contemplated  the  archbishop,  and  the  sovereign  v.'ho 
persisted  to  revive  it,  dragged  to  the  block.  What  invisi- 
ble thread  suspend  together  the  most  remote  events  ! 

The  parliament's  armies  usually  chose  Sundays  for 
their  battles,  that  the  profanation  of  the  day  might  be 
expiated  by  a  field-sacrifice,  and  that  the  Sabbath- 
breakers  should  receive  a  signal  punishment.  The 
oijinions  of  the  nature  of  the  Sabbath  were,  even  in  the 
succeeding  reign,  so  opposite  and  novel,  that  plays  were 
performed  before  Charles  on  Sundays.  James  I,,  wlio 
knew  nothing  of  such  opinions,  has  been  unjustly  aspersed 
by  those  Avho  live  in  more  settled  times,  when  such 
matters  have  been  more  wisely  established  than  ever  they 
were  discussed.* 

*  It  is  remarkable  of  James  I.  that  he  rever  pressed  for  the 
performance  of  any  of  his  proclamations ;  and  his  facile  disposition 
made  him  moi'e  tolerant  than  appears  in  onr  history.  At  this  very 
time,  the  conduct  of  a  lord  mayor  of  London  has  been  preserved  by 
Wilson,  as  a  proof  of  the  city  magistrate's  piety,  and,  it  may  be  added, 
of  his  wisdom.  It  is  here  adduced  as  an  evidence  of  the  king's  usual 
conduct: — 

The  king's  carriages,  removing  to  Theobalds  on  the  Sabbath, 
occasioned  a  great  clatter  and  noise  in  the  time  of  divine  service.  The 
lord-mayor  commanded  them  to  bo  stopped,  and  the  officers  of  the 
carriages,  returning  to  the  king,  made  violent  complaints.  The  king, 
in  a  rage,  swore  he  thought  there  had  been  no  more  kings  in  England 
than  himself;  and  sent  a  warrant  to  the  lord-mayor  to  let  them  pass, 
which  ho  obeyed,  observing. — "  While  it  was  in  my  power,  I  did  my 
duty     but  that  being  taken  away  by  a  higher  power,  it  is  my  duty  to 


MOTIVES  OF  THE  KING'S  AVERSION  TO  WAR.     555 

MOTIVES   OF  THE  KING'S  AVERSION   TO 
WAR 

The  king's  aversion  to  war  has  been  attributed  to  his 
piisillanimity — as  if  personal  was  the  same  thing  as 
political  courage,  and  as  if  a  king  placed  himself  in  a 
field  of  battle  by  a  proclamation  for  wai*.  The  idle  talo 
that  James  trembled  at  the  mere  view  of  a  naked  sword, 
which  is  produced  as  an  instance  of  the  eflects  of 
sympathy  over  the  infant  in  the  womb  from  his  mother's 
terror  at  the  assassination  of  Rizzio,  is  probably  not 
true,  yet  it  serves  the  purpose  of  inconsiderate  writers  to 
indicate  his  excessive  pusillanimity ;  but  there  is  another 
idle  tale  of  an  opposite  nature  which  is  certainly  true : — 
In  passing  from  Berwick  into  his  new  kingdom,  the  king, 
with  his  own  hand,  "  shot  out  of  a  cannon  so  fayre  and 
with  so  great  judgment"  as  convinced  the  cannoniers  of 
the  king's  skill  "  in  great  artillery,"  as  Stowe  records.  It 
is  probable,  after  all,  that  James  I.  was  not  deficient  in 
personal  courage,  although  this  is  not  of  consequence  in 
his  literary  and  political  character.  Several  instances  are 
recorded  of  his  intrepidity.  But  the  absurd  charge  of 
his  pusillanimity  and  his  pedantry  has  been  carried  so  far, 
as  to  suppose  that  it  affected  his  character  as.  a  sovereign. 
The  warm  and  hasty  Burnet-says  at  once  of  James  I. : — • 
"He  was  despised  by  all  abroad  as  a  pedant  without 
true  judgment,  courage,  or  steadiness."  This  "  pedant," 
however,  had  "  the  true  judgment  and  steadiness"  to  ob- 
tain his  favourite  purpose,  which  was  the  prej^ervation  of  a 
continued  peace.  If  James  I.  was  sometimes  despised  by 
foreign  powers,  it  was  because  an  insular  king,  who  will 
not  consume  the  blood  and  treasure  of  his  people  (and 

obey."  The  good  sense  of  the  lord-mayor  so  highly  gratiflod  James, 
that  the  king  complimented  him,  and  thanked  him  for  it.  Of  suoh 
gentleness  was  the  arbitrary  power  of   James  composed! 


556  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

James  had  neither  to  spare),  may  be  little  regarded  on 
the  Continent ;  the  Machiavels  of  foreign  cabinets  ■will 
look  with  contempt  on  the  domestic  blessings  a  British 
sovereign  would  scatter  among  his  subjects ;  his  presence 
with  the  foreigners  is  only  felt  m  his  armies  ;  and  they 
seek  to  allure  him  to  fight  their  battles,  and  to  involve 
him  in  their  interests. 

James  looked  with  a  cold  eye  on  the  military  adven- 
turer :  he  said,  "  No  man  gains  by  war  but  he  that  hath 
not  wherewith  to  live  in  peace."  But  there  was  also  a 
secret  motive,  which  made  the  king  a  lover  of  peace,  and 
which  he  once  thus  confidentially  opened : — 

"  A  king  of  England  had  no  reason  but  to  seek  always 
to  decline  a  war ;  for  though  the  sword  was  indeed  in  his 
hand,  the  purse  was  in  the  people's.  One  could  not  go 
without  the  other.  Suppose  a  supply  were  levied  to  begin 
the  fray,  what  certainty  could  he  have  that  he  should  not 
want  sufficient  to  make  an  honourable  end  ?  If  he  called 
for  subsidies,  and  did  not  obtain,  he  must  retreat  inglo- 
riously.  He  must  beg  an  alms,  with  such  conditions  as 
would  break  the  heart  of  majesty,  through  capitulations 
that  some  members  would  m,a1ce,  who  desire  to  improve  the 
reputatio7i  of  their  wisdom^  by  retrenching  the  dignity  of 
the  croion  in  popular  declamations,  and  thus  he  must  buy 
the  soldier's  pay,  or  fear  the  danger  of  a  mutiny."* 


JAMES    ACKNOWT.EDGES    HIS    DEPENDENCE 
ON   THE  COMMONS.— THEIR  CONDUCT. 

Thus  James  I.,  perpetually  accused  of  exercising 
arbitrary  power,  confesses  a  humiliating  dependence  on 
the  Commons ;  and,  on  the  whole,  at  a  time  when 
prerogative    and   privilege   Avere    alike    indefinite    and 

*  Hacket'a  "Lifo  of  Lord-Keeper  Williams,"  p.  80.  The  whole  is 
distinguislied  by  italics,  as  the  king's  owa  words. 


DEPENDENCE  ON  THE  COMMONS.       557 

obscure,  the  king  received  from  them  hard  and  rigorous 
usage.  A  king  of  peace  claimed  the  indulgence,  if  not 
the  gratitude,  of  the  people ;  and  the  sovereign  who  was 
zealous  to  correct  the  abuses  of  his  government,  was  not 
distinguished  by  the  Commons  from  him  who  insolently 
would  perpetuate  them. 

When  the  Commons  were  not  in  good  humour  with 
Elizabeth,  or  James,  they  contrived  three  methods  of 
inactivity,  running  the  time  to  waste — nihil  agendo,  or 
aliud  agendo,  or  mali  agendo j  doing  nothing,  doing 
something  else,  or  doing  evilly.*  In  one  of  these  irksome 
moments,  waitmg  for  subsidies,  Elizabeth  anxiously 
inquired  of  the  Speaker,  "  What  had  passed  in  the 
Lower  House  ?"  He  replied,  "  If  it  please  your 
Majesty — seven  weeks."  On  one  of  those  occasions, 
when  the  queen  broke  into  a  passion  when  they  urged 
her  to  a  settlement  of  the  succession,  one  of  the  deputies 
of  the  Commons  informed  her  Majesty,  that  "the 
Commons  would  never  speah  about  a  subsidy,  ,or  any 
other  matter  whatever ;  and  that  hitherto  nothing  but 
the  most  trivial  discussions  had  passed  in  parliament : 
which  was,  therefore,  a  great  assembly  rendered  entirely 
useless, — and  all  were  desirous  of  returning  home."f 

But  the  more  easy  and  open  nature  of  James  I. 
endured  greater  hardships :  with  the  habit  of  studious 
men,  the  king  had  an  utter  carelessness  of  money  and  a 
generosity  of  temper,  which  Hacket,  in  his  Life  of  the 
Lord-Keeper  Williams,  has  described.  "  The  king  was 
wont  to  give  like  a  king,  and  for  the  most  pai-t  to  keep 
one  act  of  liberality  warm  with  the  covering  of  another." 
He  seemed  to  have  had  no  distinct  notions  of  total 
amounts ;   he  was  once  so  shocked  at  the  sischt  of  the 


*  I  find  this  description  in  a  MS.  letter  of  the  times. 
\  From  a  MS.  letter  of  the  French  ambassador,  La  Mothe  Fenelon, 
to  Charles  IX.,  then  at  the  court  of  London,  in  mj  possession. 


558  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

money  he  had  gi-antecl  away,  lying  in  heaps  on  a  table, 
that  he  instantly  reduced  it  to  half  the  sura.  It  appears 
that  Parliament  never  granted  even  the  ordinary  supplies 
they  had  given  to  his  predecessors;  his  chief  revenue  was 
drawn  from  the  customs  ;  yet  his  debts,  of  which  I  find 
an  account  in  the  Parliamentary  History,  after  a  reign  of 
twenty-one  years,  did  not  amount  to  200,000/,*  This 
monarch  could  not  have  been  so  wasteful  of  his 
revenues  as  it  is  presumed.  James  I.  was  always  gener- 
ous, and  left  scarcely  any  debts.  He  must  have  lived 
amidst  many  self-deprivations  ;  nor  was  this  difficult  to 
practise  for  this  king,  for  he  was  a  philosopher,  indifferent 
to  the  common  and  imaginary  wants  of  the  vulgar  of 
royalty.  Whenever  he  threw  himself  into  the  arms  of 
his  Parliament,  they  left  him  without  a  feeling  of  his 
distress.     In  one  of  his  speeches  he  says — 

"  In  the  last  Parliament  I  laid  open  the  true  thoughts 
of  my  heart ;  but  I  may  say,  with  our  Saviour,  '  I  have 
piped  to  you,  and  you  have  not  danced ;  I  have  moiirned, 
and  you  have  not  lamented.'  I  have  reigned  eighteen 
years,  in  which  time  you  have  had  peace,  and  I  have  re- 
ceived far  less  supply  than  hath  been  given  to  any  king 
since  the  Conquest." 

Thus  James,  denied  the  relief  he  claimed,  was  forced 
on  wretched  expedients,  selling  patents  for  monopolies, 
craving  benevolences,  or  free  gifts,  and  such  expedients ; 
the  monopolies  had  been  usual  in  Elizabeth's  reign ;  yet 
all  our  historians  agree,  that  his  subjects  were  never 
grievously  oppressed  by  such  occasional  levies ;  this  was 
even  the  confession  of  the  contemporaries  of  this  mon- 
arch. They  were  every  day  becoming  wealthier  by 
those  acts  of  peace  they  despised  the  monarch  for  main- 
taining. "The  kingdom,  since  his  reign  began,  was 
luxuriant  in  gold  and  silver,  far  above  the  scant  of  our 

*  "Parliamentary  History,"  vol.  v.,  p.  147. 


DEPENDENCE   OX  THE   COMMONS.  559 

fathers  who  lived  before  us,"  are  the  words  of  a  contem- 
porary.* All  flourished  about  the  king,  except  the  king 
himself  James  I.  discovered  how  light  and  hollow  was 
his  boasted  "  prerogative-royal,"  which,  by  its  power  of 
dissolving  the  Parliament,  could  only  keep  silent  those 
who  had  already  refused  their  aid. 

A  wit  of  the  day  described  the  Parliaments  of  James 
by  this  ludicrous  distich  : 

Many  faults  complained  of,  few  things  amended, 
A  subsidy  granted,  the  Parliament  ended. 

But  this  was  rarely  the  fact.  Sometimes  they  address- 
ed James  I.  by  what  the  king  called  a  "  stinging  peti- 
tion ;"  or,  when  the  ministers,  passing  over  in  silence  the 
motion  of  the  Commons,  pressed  for  supplies,  the  heads 
of  a  party  replied,  that  to  grant  them  were  to  put  an 
end  to  Parliament.  But  they  practised  expedients  and 
contrivances,  which  comported  as  little  with  the  dignity 
of  an  English  senate,  as  with  the  majesty  of  the  sover- 
eign. 

At  a  late  hour,  when  not  a  third  part  of  the  house  re- 
mained, and  those  who  required  a  fuller  house,  amid 
darkness  and  confusion,  were  neither  seen  nor  heard, 
they  made  a  protest, — of  which  the  king  approved  as 
little  of  the  ambiguous  matter,  as  the  surreptitious  means ; 
and  it  was  then,  that,  with  his  o^vn  hand,  he  tore  the  leaf 
out  of  the  journal. f  In  the  sessions  of  1614  the  king 
was  still  more  indignant  at  their  proceedings.  He  and 
the  Scotch  had  been  vilified  by  their  invectives;  and 
they  were  menaced  by  two  lawyers,  with  a  "  Sicilian 
vespers,  or  a  Parisian  matins."  They  aimed  to  reduce 
the  king  to  beggary,  by  calling  in  question  a  third  part 
of  his  revenue,  contesting  his  prerogative  in  levying  his 
customs.      On  this  occasion  I  find  that,  publicly  in  the 

*  Hacket's  "  Life  of  Lord-Keeper  "WiUiams." 
f  "  Rushworth,"  vol.  i.,  p.  54. 


560  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

Banqueting-house  at  Whitehall,  the  king  tore  all  their  bills 
before  their  faces ;  and,  as  not  a  single  act  was  passed, 
in  the  phrase  of  the  day  this  was  called  an  addle,  Parlia- 
ment.* Such  unhajDpy  jsroceedings  indicated  the  fatal 
divisions  of  the  succeeding  reign.  A  meeting  of  a  difier- 
ent  complexion  once  occurred  in  1621,  late  in  James's 
reign.  The  monopolies  were  then  abolished.  The  king 
and  the  prince  shed  reciprocal  tears  in  the  house;  and 
the  prince  wept  when  he  brought  an  affectionate  message 
of  thanks  from  the  Commons.  The  letter-writer  says, 
"  It  is  a  day  worthy  to  be  kept  holiday ;  some  say  it  shall, 
but  I  believe  them  not."  It  never  was ;  for  even  this  par- 
liament broke  up  with  the  cries  of  "some  tribunitial  ora- 
tors," as  James  designated  the  pure  and  the  impure  demo- 
cratic sjDirits.  Smollett  remarks  in  his  margin,  that  the 
king  endeavoured  to  cajole  the  Commons.  Had  he 
known  of  the  royal  tears,  he  had  still  heightened  the 
phrase.  Hard  fate  of  kings !  Should  ever  their  tears 
attest  the  warmth  of  honest  feelings,  they  must  be  tlirown 
out  of  the  pale  of  humanity  :  for  Francis  Osborne,  that 
cynical  republican,  declares,  "that  there  ai'e  as  few  abom- 
inable princes  as  tolerable  kings;  because  princes  must 
court  the  public  favour  before  they  attain  supreme  pow- 
er, and  then  change  their  nature  ! "  Such  is  the  egotism 
of  republicanism ! 


SCANDALOUS   CHRONICLES. 

The  character  of  James  I.  has  always  been  taken  from 
certain  scandalous  chronicles,  whose  origin  requires  detec- 
tion. It  is  this  mud  which  has  darkened  and  disturbed 
the  clear  stream  of  history.  The  reigns  of  Elizabeth  and 
James  teemed  with  libels  in  church  and  state  from  oppo 
site  pai'ties :  the  idleness  of  the  pacific  court  of  James  I. 

*  From  a  MS.  of  the  timea. 


SCANDALOUS   CHRONICLES.  561 

hatched  a  viperous  brood  of  a  less  hardy,  but  perhaps  of 
a  more  malignant  nature,  than  the  Martin  Mai'-prelatos 
of  the  preceding  reign.  Those  boldly  at  once  wrote  trea- 
son, and,  in  some  respects,  honestly  dared  the  rope  which 
could  only  silence  Penry  and  his  party ;  but  these  only 
reached  to  scandalum  magnatum,  and  the  puny  wretches 
could  only  have  crept  into  a  pillory.  In  the  times  of  the 
Commonwealth,  when  all  things  were  agreeable  which 
vilified  our  kings,  these  secret  histories  were  dragged  from 
their  lurking  holes.  The  writers  are  meagre  Suetoniuses 
and  Procopiuses  ;  a  set  of  self-elected  spies  in  the  court ; 
gossipers,  lounging  in  the  same  circle ;  eaves-droppers ; 
pryers  into  corners ;  buzzers  of  reports ;  and  punctual 
scribes  of  what  the  French  (so  skilful  in  the  profession) 
technically  term  les  on  dit ;  that  is,  things  that  might 
never  have  happened,  although  they  are  recorded  :  regis- 
tered for  posterity  in  many  a  scandalous  chronicle,  they 
have  been  mistaken  for  histories ;  and  include  so  many 
truths  and  falsehoods,  that  it  becomes  unsafe  for  the  liis- 
torian  either  to  credit  or  to  disbelieve  them.* 


*  Most  of  these  works  were  meanly  printed,  and  were  usually  found 
in  a  state  of  filth  and  rags,  and  would  have  perished  in  their  own 
merited  neglect,  had  tliey  not  been  recently  splendidly  reprinted  by  Sir 
Walter  Scott.  Thus  the  garbage  has  been  cleanly  laid  on  a  fashionable 
epergne,  and  found  quite  to  the  taste  of  certain  lovers  of  authentic 
history  1  Sir  Anthony  Weldon,  clerk  of  the  king's  kitchen,  in  his 
"  Court  of  King  James  "  has  been  reproached  for  gaining  much  of  his 
scandalous  chronicle  from  the  purlieus  of  the  court.  For  this  work 
and  some  similar  ones,  especially  "  The  None-Such  Charles,"  in  which 
it  would  appear  that  he  had  procured  materials  from  the  State  Paper 
Office,  and  lor  other  zealous  services  to  the  Parliament,  they  voted 
him  a  grant  of  500Z.  "The  Five  Years  of  King  James,"  which  passes 
under  the  name  of  Sir  Fulk  Greville,  the  dignified  friend  of  the  roman- 
tic Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  is  frequently  referred  to  by  grave  writers, 
is  certainly  a  Presbyterian's  third  day's  hash  —  for  there  are  parts 
copied  from  Arthur  Wilson's  "  History  of  James  I.,"  who  was  him- 
self the  pensioner  of  a  disappointed  courtier ;  yet  this  writer  never 
attacks  tlie  personal  character  of  the  king,  though  charged  with  hav- 


562  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES    THE   FIRST. 

Such  was  the  race  generated  in  this  court  of  peace  and 
indolence  !  And  Hacket,  in  his  "  Life  of  the  Lord-Keeper 
Williams,"  without  disguising  the  fact,  tells  us  that  the 
Lord-Keeper  "  spared  not  for  cost  to  purchase  the  mos* 
certain  intelligence,  by  his  fee'd  pensioners,  of  evern^ 
hour's  occurrences  at  court  •  and  was  wont  to  say  that 
no  man  could  be  a  statesman  without  a  great  deal  of 
money." 

We  catch  many  glimpses  of  these  times  in  another 
branch  of  the  same  family.  When  news-books,  as  the 
first  newspapers  wei'e  called,  did  not  yet  exist  to  appease 
the  hungering  curiosity  of  the  country,  a  voluminous 
correspondence  was  carried  on  between  residents  in  the 

ing  scraped  up  many  tales  maliciously  false.  Osborne  is  a  misanthropi- 
cal politician,  who  cuts  with  the  most  corroding  pen  that  ever  rot- 
tened  a  man's  name.  James  was  very  negligent  in  dress;  graceful 
appearances  did  not  come,  into  his  studies.  Weldon  tells  us  how 
the  king  was  trussed  on  norseback,  and  fixed  there  like  a  pedlar's  pack 
or  a  lump  of  inanimate  matter;  the  truth  is,  the  king  had  always  an 
infirmity  in  his  legs.  Further,  we  are  told  that  this  ridiculous  mon- 
arch allowed  his  hat  to  remain  just  as  it  chanced  to  be  placed  on  hia 
head.  Osborne  once  saw  this  unlucky  king  "  in  a  green  hunting-dress, 
with  a  feather  in  his  cap,  and  a  horn,  instead  of  a  sword,  by  his  side ; 
how  suitable  to  his  age,  calling,  or  person,  I  leave  others  to  judge  fron: 
his  pictures:"  and  this  he  bitterly  calls  '•  leaving  him  dressed  for  pos- 
terity!" This  is  the  style  which  passes  for  history  with  some  readers. 
Hume  observes  that  "hunting,"  which  was  James's  sole  recreation, 
necessary  for  his  health,  as  a  sedentaiy  scholar,  " is  the  cheapest  a 
king  can  indulge;"  and,  indeed,  the  empty  coffers  of  this  monarch 
afforded  no  other. 

These  pseudo-histories  are  alluded  to  by  Arthur  Wilson  as  "mon- 
strous satires  against  the  king's  own  person,  that  liaunted  both  court 
and  country,"  when,  in  the  wantonness  of  the  times,  "  every  little 
miscarriage,  exuberantly  branched,  so  that  evil  report  did  often  perch 
on  them."  Fuller  has  designated  those  suspicious  scribes  as  "  a  gener- 
ation of  the  people  who,  like  moths,  have  lurked  under  the  carpets  of 
the  council-table,  and  oven  like  fleas,  have  leaped  into  the  pillows  of 
the  prince's  bed-chamber ;  and,  to  enhance  the  reputation  of  their 
knowledge,  thence  derived  that  of  all  things  which  were,  or  were  not, 
ever  done  or  thought  of" — Church  IR'itory,  book  x.,  p.  87. 


SCANDALOUS   CHRONICLES.  5C3 

metropolis  and  their  country  friends  :  tliese  letters  chiefly 
remain  in  their  MS.  state.*  Great  men  then  employed  a 
scribe  who  had  a  talent  this  way,  and  sometimes  a  confi- 
dential friend,  to  convey  to  them  the  secret  history  of 
the  times ;  and,  on  the  whole,  they  are  composed  by  a 
better  sort  of  writers ;  for,  as  they  had  no  other  design 
than  to  inform  their  friends  of  the  true  state  of  passing 
events,  they  were  eager  to  correct,  by  subsequent  ac- 
counts the  lies  of  the  day  they  sometimes  sent  down. 
They  have  preserved  some  fugitive  events  useful  in  histor- 
ical researches,  but  their  pens  are  garrulous  ;  and  it  re- 
quires some  experience  to  discover  the  character  of  the 
writers,  to  be  enabled  to  adopt  their  opinions  and  their 
statements.  Little  things  were,  however,  great  matters 
to  these  diurnalists ;  much  time  was  spent  in  learning 
of  those  at  court,  who  had  quarrelled,  or  were  on  the 
point ;  who  were  seen  to  have  bit  their  lips,  and  looked 
doAvncast ;  who  was  budding,  and  whose  full-blown  flower 
was  drooping :  then  we  have  the  sudden  reconcilement 
and  the  anticipated  fallings  out,  with  a  deal  of  the  pour- 
quoi  of  the  pourquoi.\ 

*  Mr.  Lodge's  "Illustrations  of  British  History"  is  an  eminent  and 
elegant  work  of  the  minufice  historicm ;  as  are  the  more  recent  volumes 
of  Sir  Henry  Ellis's  valuable  collections. 

f  Some  specimens  of  this  sort  of  correspondence  of  the  idleness  of  the 
times  may  amuse.  The  learned  Mede,  to  his  friend  Sir  Martin  Stute- 
vihe,  chronicles  a  fracas  : — "  I  am  told  of  a  great  falling  out  between 
my  Lord  Treasurer  and  my  Lord  Digby,  insomuch  that  they  came  to 
pedlar's  blood  and  traitor's  Mood.  It  was  about  some  money  which  my 
Lord  Digby  should  have  had,  which  my  Lord  Treasurer  thought  too 
much  for  the  charge  of  his  employment,  and  said  himself  could  go  in 
as  good  a  fashion  for  half  the  sum.  But  my  Lord  Digby  replies  that 
he  could  not  peddle  so  well  as  his  lordship." 

A  lively  genius  sports  with  a  fanciful  pen  in  conveying  the  same 
kind  of  intelligence,  and  so  nice  in  the  shades  of  curiosity,  that  he  can 
describe  a  quarrel  before  it  takes  place. 

"You  know  the  primum  raolile  of  our  court  (Buckingham),  by  whose 
motion  all  the  other  spheres  must  move,  or  else  stand  still :  the  bright 


564:  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

Such  was  this  race  of  gossipers  in  the  environs  of  a 
court,  where,  steeped  in  a  supine  lethargy  of  peace,  cor- 
rupting or  corrupted,  every  man  stood  for  himself 
through  a  reckless  scene  of  expedients  and  of  compro- 
mises. 


A  PICTURE  OF  THE  AGE  FROM  A  MS.  OF  THE 
TIME. 

A  LONG  reign  of  peace,  which  had  produced  M^ealth  in 
that  age,  engendered  the  extremes  of  luxury  and  want. 
Money  traders  practised  the  art  of  decoying  the  gallant 
youths  of  the  day  into  their  nets,  and  transforming,  in  a 
certain  time,  the  estates  of  the  country  gentlemen  into 
skins  of  parchment, 

The  wax  contiuuing  hard,  the  acres  melting. 

Massingkr. 

Projectors  and  monopolists  who  had  obtained  patents 
for  licensing  all  the  iims  and  alehouses — for  being  the 
sole  vendors  of  manufactured  articles,  such  as  gold  lace, 
tobacco-pipes,  starch,  soap,  &c.,  were  grinding  and 
cheating  the  people  to  an  extent  which  was  not  at  first 

sun  of  our  firmament,  at  whose  splendour  or  glooming  all  our  mary- 
golds  of  the  court  open  or  shut.  There  are  in  higher  spheres  as  great 
as  he,  but  none  so  glorious.  But  the  king  is  in  progress,  and  we  are 
far  from  court.  Now  to  iiear  certuinties.  It  is  told  me  that  my  Lord 
of  Pembroke  and  my  Lord  of  Rochester  are  so  far  out,  as  it  is  almost 
come  to  a  quarrel;  I  know  not  how  true  this  is,  but  Sir  Thomas  Over- 
bury  and  my  Lord  of  Pembroke  have  been  long  jarring,  and  therefore 
the  other  is  hkely." 

Among  the  numerous  MS.  letters  of  tliis  kind,  I  have  often  ob- 
served the  writer  uneasy  at  the  scandal  he  has  seasoned  his  letter 
with,  and  concluding  earnestly  that  his  letter,  after  perusal,  should  be 
thrown  to  the  flames.  A  wish  which  appears  to  have  been  rarely  com- 
plied with;  and  this  may  serve  as  u  hint  to  some  to  restrain  their 
tattling  pens,  if  they  regard  their  own  peace  ;  for,  on  most  occasions  of 
this  nature,  the  letters  are  rather  preserved  with  peculiar  care. 


A  PICTtJRE  OP  THE   AGE.  565 

understood,  although  the  practice  had  existed  in  the 
former  reign.  The  gentry,  Avhose  family  pride  would 
vie  with  these  nouveaux  riches,  exhavxsted  themselves  in 
rival  profusion  ;  all  crowded  to  "  upstart  London,"  de- 
serting their  country  mansions,  which  wei*e  now  left  to 
the  care  of  "  a  poor  alms-woman,  or  a  bed-rid  beadsman." 

In  that  day,  this  abandonment  of  the  ancient  country 
hospitality  for  the  metropolis,  and  this  breaking-up  of 
old  family  establishments,  crowded  London  with  new  and 
distinct  races  of  idlers,  or,  as  they  would  now  be  called, 
unproductive  members  of  society.  From  a  contempo- 
rary manuscx'ipt,  one  of  those  spirited  remonstrances  ad- 
dressed to  the  king,  which  it  was  probably  thought  not 
prudent  to  publish,  I  shall  draw  some  extracts,  as  a  for- 
cible picture  of  the  manners  of  the  age.*  Masters  of 
ancient  families,  to  maintain  a  mere  exterior  of  magnifi- 
cence in  dress  and  equipage  in  the  metropolis,  were 
really  at  the  same  time  hiding  themselves  in  penury  : 
they  thrust  themselves  into  lodgings,  and  "  five  or  six 
knights,  or  justices  of  peace,"  with  all  their  retinue,  be- 
came the  inmates  of  a  shopkeeper ;  yet  these  gentlemen 
had  once  "  kept  the  rusty  chimneys  of  two  or  three 
houses  smoking,  and  had  been  the  feeders  of  twenty  or 
forty  serving-men  :  a  single  page,  with  a  guarded  coat, 
served  their  turn  now. 

"  Every  one  strives  to  be  a  Diogenes  in  his  house  and 
an  emperor  in  the  streets ;  not  caring  if  they  sleep  in  a 
tub,  so  they  may  be  hurried  in  a  coach  ;  giving  that 
allowance  to  horses  and  mares  that  formerly  maintained 
houses  full  of  men ;  pinching  many  a  belly  to  paint  a 
few  backs,  and  burying  all  the  treasures  of  the  kingdom 
into  a  few  citizens'  coffers. 

*  The  MS.  is  entitled  "  Balaam's  Ass,  or  a  True  Discoverie  touching 
the  Murmurs  and  Feared  Discontents  of  the  Times,  directed  to  King 
James." — Lansdowne  Collection,  209.  The  writer,  throughout,  speaks 
of  the  king  with  the  highest  respect. 


566  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

"  Tiiere  are  now,"  the  writer  adds,  "  twenty  thousand 
masterless  men  turned  off,  who  know  not  this  night 
where  to  lodge,  where  to  eat  to-morrow,  and  ready  to 
undertake  any  desperate  course." 

Yet  there  was  still  a  more  turbulent  and  dangerous 
race  of  idlers,  in 

"  A  number  of  younger  brothers,  of  ancient  houses, 
who,  nursed  up  in  fulness,  pampered  in  their  minority, 
and  left  in  charge  to  their  elder  brothers,  who  were  to 
be  fathers  to  them,  followed  them  in  despair  to  London, 
where  these  untimely-born  youths  are  left  so  bare,  that 
their  whole  life's  allowance  was  consumed  in  one  year." 

The  same  manuscript  exhibits  a  full  and  spirited  pic- 
ture of  manners  in  this  long  period  of  peace. 

"  The  gentry  are  like  owls,  all  feathers  and  no  flesh ; 
all  show,  and  no  substance  ;  all  fashion,  and  no  feeding ; 
and  fit  for  no  service  but  masks  and  May-games.  The 
citizens  have  dealt  with  them  as  it  is  said  the  Indians  are 
dealt  with ;  they  have  given  them  counterfeit  brooches 
and  bugle-bracelets  for  gold  and  silver ;  *  pins  and  peacock 

*  Sir  Giles  Mompesson  and  Sir  James  Mitchell  had  the  monopoliea 
of  gold  lace,  which  they  sold  in  a  counterfeit  state ;  and  not  only 
cheated  the  people,  but,  by  a  mixture  of  copper,  the  ornaments  made 
of  it  are  said  to  have  rotted  the  flesh.  As  soon  as  the  grievance  was 
shown  to  James,  he  expressed  his  abhorrence  of  the  practice,  and 
even  declared  that  no  person  connected  with  the  villanous  fraud 
should-'escape  punishment.  The  brother  of  his  favourite,  Bucking- 
ham, was  known  to  be  one,  and  with  Sir  Giles  Overreach  (as  Massin- 
gor  conceals  the  name  of  Mompesson),  was  compelled  to  fly  the  coun- 
try. The  style  of  James,  in  his  speech,  is  indeed  different  from 
kings'  speeches  in  parliament :  he  speaks  as  indignantly  as  any  indi- 
vidual who  v/as  personally  aggrieved:  "Three  patents  at  this  tune 
have  been  complained  of,  and  thought  great  grievances;  my  purpose 
is  to  strike  them  all  dead,  and,  that  time  may  not  be  lost,  I  will  have 
it  done  presently.  Had  these  things  been  complained  of  to  me, 
before  the  parliament,  I  could  have  done  the  oflice  of  a  just  king,  and 
have  punished  them  ;  peradventure  more  than  now  ye  intend  to  do. 
No  private  person  whatsoever,  were  he  ever  so  dear  unto  me,  shall  be 


A  PICTURE   OF   THE   AGE.  507 

feathers  for  lands  and  tenements ;  gilded  coaches  and 
outlandish  hobby-horses  for  goodly  castles  and  ancient 
mansions ;  their  woods  are  turned  into  wardrobes,  their 
leases  into  laces ;  and  their  goods  and  chattels  into 
guarded  coats  and  gaudy  toys.  Should  your  Majesty 
fly  to  them  for  relief,  you  would  fare  like  those  birds 
that  peck  at  painted  fruits ;  all  outside."  The  writer 
then  describes  the  affected  penurious  habits  of  the  grave 
citizens,  who  were  then  preying  on  the  country  gentle- 
men : — "  When  those  big  swoln  leeches,  that  have  thus 
sucked  them,  wear  rags,  eat  roots,  speak  like  jugglers  that 
have  reeds  in  their  mouths ;  look  like  spittle-men,  espe- 
cially when  your  Majesty  hath  occasion  to  use  them ; 
their  fat  lies  in  their  heails,  their  substance  is  buried  in 
their  bowels,  and  he  that  will  have  it  must  first  take 
their  lives.  Their  study  is  to  get,  and  their  chiefest  care 
to  conceal;  and  most  from  yourself,  gracious  sir;  not  a 
commodity  comes  from  their  hand,  but  you  pay  a  noble 
in  the  pound  for  boohing,  which  they  call  forbearing* 
They  think  it  lost  time  if  they  double  not  their  principal 
in  two  years.  They  have  attractive  powders  to  draw 
these  flffes  into  their  claws;  they  will  entice  men  with 
honey  into  their  hives,  and  with  wax  entangle  them ;  f 

respected  by  me  by  many  degrees  as  the  public  good ;  and  I  hope,  my 
lords,  that  ye  will  do  me  that  right  to  publish  to  my  people  this  my 
heart  purposes.  Proceed  judicially ;  spare  none,  whore  ye  find  just 
cause  to  punish :  but  remember  that  laws  have  not  their  eyes  in  their 
necks,  but  in  their  foreheads." — Rush  worth,  vol.  i.,  p.  2G. 

*  The  credit  which  these  knavish  traders  gave  their  customers,  who 
could  not  conveniently  pay  their  money  down,  was  carried  to  an  exor- 
bitant charge ;  since,  even  in  Elizabeth's  reign,  it  was  one  of  the  pop- 
ular grievances  brought  into  Parhament — it  is  there  called,  "  A  bill 
against  Douhk  Payments  of  Book  Debts."  One  of  the  country  mem- 
bers, who  made  a  speech  consisting  entirely  of  proverbs,  said,  "Pay 
the  reckoning  overnight,  and  you  shall  not  be  troubled  in  the  morn- 
ing." 

f  In  the  life  of  a  famous  usurer  of  that  day,  who  died  worth 
400,000i.,  an  amazing  sum  at  that  period,  we  find  numberless  expo- 


568  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

they  pack  the  cards,  and  their  confederates,  the  lords, 
deal,  by  which  means  no  other  men  have  ever  good 
game.  They  have  in  a  few  years  laid  up  riches  for  many, 
and  yet  can  never  be  content  to  say — Soul,  take  thy  rest, 
or  hand  receive  no  tnore  y  do  no  more  wrong :  but  still 
they  labour  to  join  house  to  house,  and  land  to  land. 
What  want  they  of  being  kings,  but  the  name  ?  Look 
into  the  shires  and  counties,  where,  with  their  purchased 
lordships  and  manors,  one  of  their  private  letters  has 
equal  power  with  your  Majesty's  privy  seal.*  It  is  better 
to  be  one  of  their  hinds,  than  your  Majesty's  gentleman 
usher ;  one  of  their  grooms,  than  your  guards.  What 
care  they,  if  it  be  called  tribute  or  no,  so  long  as  it 
comes  in  terraly  :  or  whether  their  chamber  be  called 
Exchequer,  or  the  dens  of  cheaters,  so  that  the  money 
be  left  there." 

This  crushing  usury  seemed  to  them  a  real  calamity ;  for 
although  in  the  present  extraordinary  age  of  calculations 

dients  and  contrivances  of  the  money  trader,  practised  on  improvident 
landholders  and  careless  heirs,  to  entangle  them  in  his  nets.  He  gen- 
erally contrived  to  make  the  wood  pay  for  the  land,  which  he  called 
"  making  the  feathers  pay  for  the  goose."  He  never  pressoil  hard  for 
his  loans,  but  fondly  compared  his  bonds  "to  infants,  which  battle 
best  by  sleeping;"  to  battle  is  to  be  nourished — a  term  still  retained 
in  the  battle-book  of  the  university.  I  have  elsewhere  preserved  the 
character  and  habits  of  the  money-dealer  in  the  age  of  James  I. — See 
"Curiosities  of  Literature,"  11th  Edit.,  p.  228. 

*  It  is  observed,  in  the  same  life,  that  his  mortgages,  and  statutes, 
and  his  judgments  were  so  numerous,  that  his  papers  would  have 
made  a  good  m;ip  of  England.  A  view  of  the  chamber  of  this  usurer 
is  preserved  by  Massinger,  who  can  only  be  understood  by  the  modern 
reader  in  Mr.  Crifford's  edition: — 

Here  lay 

A  manor,  bound  fast  in  a  skin  of  parchment; 

Here  a  sure  deed  of  gift  for  a  market-town, 

If  not  rodeem'd  this  daj',  which  is  not  in 

The  unthrift's  purse;  there  being  scarce  one  shiro 

In  Wales  or  England,  where  my  monies  are  not 

Lent  out  at  usury,  the  certain  hook 

To  draw  in  more.  Massinqer's  City  Madam. 


ANECDOTES   OF   THE   MANNERS  OF   THE   AGE.     569 

and  artificial  wealth,  we  can  suffer  "  a  dunghill-breed  of 
men,"  like  Mompesson  and  his  contemptible  partner  of 
this  reign,  to  accumulate  in  a  rapid  period  more  than  a 
ducal  fortune,  without  any  apparent  injury  to  the  public 
welfare,  the  result  Avas  different  then ;  the  legitimate  and 
enlarged  principles  of  commerce  were  not  practised  by 
our  citizens  in  the  first  era  of  their  prosperity  ;  their 
absorbing  avarice  rapidly  took  in  all  the  exhausting  prodi- 
gality of  the  gentry,  who  were  pushed  back  on  the 
people  to  prey  in  their  turn  on  them ;  those  who  found 
their  own  acres  disappearing,  became  enclosers  of  com- 
mons ;  this  is  one  of  the  gi-ievances  which  Massinger 
notices,  while  the  writer  of  the  "  Five  Years  of  King 
James  "  tells  us  that  these  discontents  between  the  gen- 
try and  the  commonality  grew  out  into  a  petty  rebel- 
lion ;  and  it  appears  by  Peyton  that  "  divers  of  the  peo- 
ple were  hanged  up." 


a:n^ecdotes  of  the  manners  of  the  age. 

The  minute  picture  of  the  domestic  manners  of  this 
age  exhibits  the  results  of  those  extremes  of  prodigality 
and  avarice  which  struck  observers  in  that  contracted 
circle  which  then  constituted  society.  The  king's  prodi- 
gal dispensations  of  honours  and  titles  seem  at  first  to 
have  been  political ;  for  James  was  a  foreigner,  and 
designed  to  create  a  nobility,  as  likewise  an  inferior 
order,  who  might  feel  a  personal  attachment  for  the  new 
monarch  ;  but  the  fiicility  by  which  titles  were  acquired, 
was  one  cause  which  occasioned  so  many  to  crowd  to  the 
metropolis  to  enjoy  their  airy  honour  by  a  substantial 
ruin ;  knighthood  had  become  so  common,  that  some  of 
the  most  infamous  and  criminal  characters  of  this  age  we 


570  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

find  in  that  rank.*  The  young  females,  driven  to  neces- 
sity by  the  fashionable  ostentation  of  their  parents,  were 
brought  to  the  metropolis  as  to  a  market ;  "  where," 
says  a  contemporary,  "  they  obtained  pensions,  or  some- 
times marriages,  by  their  beauty."  When  Gondomar, 
the  Spanish  ambassador,  passed  to  his  house,  the  ladies 
were  at  their  balconies  on  the  watch,  to  make  themselves 
known  to  him ;  and  it  appears  that  every  one  of  those 
ladies  had  sold  their  favours  at  a  dear  rate.  Among 
these  are  some,  "  who  pretending  to  be  loits^  as  they  called 
them,"  says  Arthur  Wilson,f  "  or  had  handsome  nieces 
or  daughters,  drew  a  great  resort  to  their  houses."  And 
it  appears  that  Gondomar,  to  prevent  these  conversa- 
ziones from  too  freely  touching  on  Spanish  politics, 
sweetened   their   s-ilence   by   his    presents.^     The   same 

*  A  statesman  may  read  with  advantage  Sir  Edward  Walker  on 
"  The  inconveniences  that  have  attended  tlie  frequent  promotions  to 
Titles,  since  King  James  came  to  the  crown."  Sir  Edward  appears 
not  to  disapprove  of  these  promotions  during  the  first  ten  years  of  his 
reign,  but  "  when  alliance  to  a  favourite,  riches  though  gotten  in  a 
ffhop,  persons  of  private  estates,  and  of  families  whose  fathers  would 
have  thought  themselves  highly  honoured  to  have  been  but  knights  in 
Queen  Elizabeth's  time,  were  advanced,  then  the  fruits  began  to  appear. 
The  greater  nobility  were  undervalued;  the  ancient  baronage  saw 
inferior  families  take  precedency  over  them ;  nobility  lost  its  respect, 
and  a  parity  in  conversation  was  introduced  which  in  Englisli  disposi- 
tions begot  contempt ;  the  king  could  not  employ  them  all ;  some  grew 
envious,  some  factious,  some  ingrateful,  however  obliged,  by  being 
once  denied." — p.  302. 

'\  One  may  conjecture,  by  this  expression,  that  the  term  of  "  wits  " 
was  then  introduced,  in  the  sense  we  now  use  it. 

f '  Wilson  has  preserved  a  characteristic  trait  of  one  of  the  lady  wits. 
When  Gondomar  one  day,  in  Drury-lane,  was  passing  Lady  Jacob's 
house,  she,  exposing  herself  lor  a  salutation  from  him,  he  bowed,  but 
in  return  she  only  opened  her  mouth,  gaping  on  him.  This  was  again 
repeated  the  following  day,  when  he  sent  a  gentleman  to  complain  of 
her  incivility.  She  replied,  that  he  had  purchased  some  favours  of 
the  ladies  at  a  dear  rate,  and  she  had  a  mouth  to  be  stopped  as  well  as 
others. 


ANECDOTES   OF  THE   MANNERS   OF  THE   AGE.     571 

grossness  of  manners  was  among  the  higher  females  of 
the  age ;  when  we  see  that  grave  statesman,  Sir  Dudley 
Carleton,  narrating  the  adventures  of  a  bridal  night,  and 
all "  the  petty  sorceries,"  the  romping  of  the  "  great  ladies, 
who  were  made  shorter  by  the  skirts,"  we  discover  their 
coarse  tastes  ;  but  when  we  find  the  king  going  to  the 
bed  of  the  bride  in  his  nightgown,  to  give  a  reveille-matin 
and  remaining  a  good  time  in  or  upon  the  bed,  "  Choose 
which  you  will  beUeve ;"  this  bride  was  not  more  decent 
than  the  ladies  who  publicly,  on  their  balconies,  were 
soliciting  the  personal  notice  of  Gondomar. 

This  coarseness  of  manners,  which  still  prevailed  in 
the  nation,  as  it  had  in  the  court  of  Henry  VIII.  and 
Elizabeth,  could  not  but  influence  the  familiar  style  of 
their  humour  and  conversation.  James  I.,  in  the  Edict 
on  Duels,  employs  the  expression  of  our  dearest  bedfellow 
to  designate  the  queen ;  and  there  was  no  indelicacy 
attached  to  this  singular  expression.  Much  of  that  silly 
and  obscene  correspondence  of  James  with  Buckingham, 
while  it  adds  one  more  mortifying  instance  of  "  the  follies 
of  the  wise,"  must  be  attributed  to  this  cause.*     Are  not 

*  Our  wonder  and  surmises  hav^e  been  often  raised  at  the  strange 
subscriptions  of  Buckingham  to  the  king, — "  Your  dog,"  and  James  as 
ingenuously  calling  him  "  dog  Steenie."  But  this  was  not  peculiar  to 
Buckingham ;  Jamef  also  called  the  grave  Cecil  his  "  little  beagle." 
The  Earl  of  "Worcester,  writing  to  Cecil,  who  had  succeeded  in  his 
search  after  one  Bywater,  the  earl  says,  "  If  the  king''s  beagle  can  hunt 
by  land  as  well  as  he  hath  done  by  water,  we  will  leave  capping  of 
Jowler,  and  cap  the  beagle.^'  The  queen,  writing  to  Buckingham  to 
intercede  with  the  king  for  Rawleigh's  life,  addresses  Buckingham  by. 
"My  kind  Dog."  James  appears  to  have  been  always  playing  on  some 
whimsical  appellative  by  which  he  characterised  his  ministers  and 
favourites,  analogous  to  the  notions  of  a  huntsman.  Many  of  our 
writers,  among  them  Sir  Walter  Scott,  have  strangely  misconceived 
these  playful  appellatives,  unconscious  of  the  origin  of  this  famiUar 
humour.  The  age  was  used  to  the  coarseness.  We  did  noc  then 
excel  all  Europe,  as  Addison  set  the  model,  in  the  delicacy  of  liumour ; 
indeed,  even  so  late  as  Congreve's  time,  they  were  discussing  its  essen- 
tial distinction  from  wit. 


572  CHARACTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

most  of  the  dramatic  works  of  that  day  fi'equently  unread- 
able from  this  circumstance  ?  As  an  historian,  it  would 
be  my  duty  to  show  how  incredibly  gross  were  the 
domestic  language  and  the  domestic  familiarities  of 
kings,  queens,  lords,  and  ladies,  which  were  much  like 
the  lowest  of  our  populace.  We  may  felicitate  ourselves 
on  having  escaped  the  grossness,  without,  howerer, 
extending  too  far  these  self-congratulations. 
*  The  men  were  dissolved  in  all  the  indolence  of  life  and 
its  wantonness ;  they  prided  themselves  in  traducing 
their. own  innocence  rather  than  suffer  a  lady's  name  to 
pass  unblemished.*  The  marriage-tie  lost  its  sacredness 
amid  these  disorders  of  social  life.  The  luxurious  idlers 
of  that  day  were  polluted  with  infamous  vices ;  and 
Drayton,  in  the  "  Mooncalf,"  has  elaborately  drawn  full- 
length  pictures  of  the  lady  and  the  gentleman  of  that 
day,  which  seem  scarcely  to  have  required  the  darkening 
tints  of  satire  to  be  hideous — in  one  line  the  Muse  de- 
scribes "  the  most  prodigious  birth  " — 

He's  too  much  woman  and  She's  too  much  man. 

The  trades  of  foppery,  in  Sjjanish  fashions,  suddenly 
sprung  up  in  this  reign,  and  exhibited  new  names  and 
new  things.  Now  silk  and  gold-lace  shops  first  adorned 
Cheapside,  which  the  continuator  of  Stowe  calls  "  the 
beauty  of  London ;"  the  extraordinary  rise  in  price  of 
these  fashionable  articles  forms  a  curious  contrast  with 
those  of  the  preceding  reign.  Scarfs,  in  Elizabeth's  time, 
of  thirty  shillings  value,  were  now  wrought  up  to  as 
many  pounds;  and  embroidered  waistcoats,  which  in  the 
queen's  reign  no  workman  knew  how  to  make  worth 
five  pounds,  were  now  so  rich  and  curious  as  to  be  cheap- 
ened at  forty.     Stowe  has  recorded  a  revolution  in  shoe- 

*  The  expression  of  one  of  these  gallauts,  as  preserved  by  Wilson, 
cannot  be  decently  given,  but  is  more  expressive. — p.  147. 


ANECDOTES   OF   THE   MANNERS  OF  THE   AGE.     573 

buckles,  portentously  closing  in  shoe-roses,  which  were 
puffed  cnots  of  silk,  or  of  precious  embroidery,  worn  even 
by  men  of  mean  rank,  at  the  cost  of  more  than  five 
pounds,  wlio  formerly  had  worn  gilt  copper  shoe-buckles. 

In  the  new  and  ruinous  excess  of  the  use  of  tobacco, 
many  consumed  three  or  four  hundred  pounds  a  year 
James,  who  perceived  the  inconveniences  of  this  sudden 
luxury  in  the  nation,  tried  to  discountenance  it,  although 
the  purpose  went  to  diminish  his  own  scanty  revenue. 
Nor  was  this  attack  on  the  abuse  of  tobacco  peculiar  to 
his  majesty,  although  he  has  been  so  ridiculed  for  it ;  a 
contemporary  jjublication  has  well  described  the  mania 
and  its  consequences :  "  The  sraoak  of  fashion  hath  quite 
blown  away  the  smoak  of  hospitalitie,  and  turned  the 
chimneys  of  their  forefathers  into  the  noseg  of  their 
children."*  The  king  also  reprobated  the  finical  em- 
barrassments of  the  new  fashions,  and  seldom  wore  new 
clothes.  When  they  brought  him  a  Spanish  hat,  he  flung 
it  away  with  scorn,  swearing  he  never  loved  them  nor 
their  fashions ;  and  when  they  put  roses  on  his  shoes,  he 
swore  too, "  that  they  should  not  make  him  a  rufie-footed 
dove;  a  yard  of  penny  ribbon  Avould  serve  that  turn." 

The  sudden  wealth  which  seems  to  have  rushed  into 
the  nation  in  this  reign  of  peace,  appeared  in  massy  plate 
and  jewels,  and  in  "  prodigal  marriage-portions,  which 
were  grown  in  fashion  among  the  nobility  and  gentry,  as 
if  the  skies  had  rained  plenty."  Such  are  the  Avoids  of- 
Hacket,  in  his  "  Memorial  of  the  Lord-Keeper  Williams." 
Enormous  wealth  was  often  accumulated.  An  usurer 
died  worth  400,000/. ;  Sir  Thomas  Compton,  a  citizen, 
left,  it  is  said,  800,000/.,  and  his  heir  was  so  overcome  with 
this  sudden  irruption  of  Avealth,  that  he  lost  his  senses ; 
and  Cranfield,  a  citizen,  became  the  Earl  of  jNJiddlesex. 

The  continued  peace,  which  produced  this  rage  for 

*Tlie  "Peace-Maker,"  1618. 


574  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES  THE   FIRST. 

dress,  equipage,  and  magnificence,  appeared  in  all  forms 
of  riot  and  excess  ;  corruption  bred  corruption.  The  in- 
dustry of  the  nation  was  not  the  commerce  of  the  many, 
but  the  arts  of  money-traders,  confined  to  the  suckers  of 
the  state ;  and  the  unemployed  and  dissipated,  who  were 
every  day  increasing  the  population  in  the  capital,  were 
a  daring  petulant  race,  described  by  a  contemporary  as 
"  persons  of  great  expense,  who,  having  run  themselves 
into  debt,  were  constrained  to  run  into  faction ;  and  de- 
fend themselves  from  the  danger  of  the  law."  *  These 
appear  to  have  enlisted  under  some  show  of  privilege 
among  the  nobility  ;  and  the  metropolis  was  often  shaken 
by  parties,  calling  themselves  Roaring-boys,  Bravadoes, 
Roysters,  and  Bonaventures.f  Such  were  some  of  the 
turbulent  ^  children  of  peace,  whose  fiery  spirits,  could 
they  have  found  their  proper  vent,  had  been  soldiers 
of  fortune,  as  they  were  younger  brothers,  distressed 
often  by  their  own  relatives ;  and  wards  ruined  by  their 
own  guardians ;  J  all  these  were  clamorous  for  bold  pira- 
cies on  the  Spaniards :  a  visionary  island,  and  a  secret 
mine,  would  often  disturb  the  dreams  of  these  unemployed 
youths,  with  whom  it  was  no  uncommon  practice  to  take 
a  purse  on  the  road.     Such  felt  that — 

In  this  plenty 
And  fat  of  peace,  our  young  men  ne'er  were  trained 
To  martial  discipline,  and  our  ships  iinrigg'd 
Rot  in  the  harbour.  Massingeb. 

The  idleness  which  rusts  quiet  minds  effervesces  in 
fieiy  spirits  pent  up  together ;  and  the  loiterers  in  the 
environs  of  a  court,  surfeiting  with  peace,  were  quick  at 
quarrel.     It  is  remarkable,  that  in  the  pacific  reign  of 

*  "Five  Years  of  King  James."      Harl.  Misc. 

f  A.  Wilson's  "  Hist,  of  James  I."  p.  28. 
J  That  ancient  oppressive  institution  of  the  Court  of  Wards  then 
existed;  and  Massinger,  the  great  painter  of  our  domestic  manners  in 
this  reign,  has  made  it  the  subject  of  one  of  his  interesting  dramas. 


ANECDOTES  OF   THE   MANNERS   OF  THE   AGE.     575 

James  I.  never  was  so  much  blood  shed  in  brawls,  nor 
duels  so  tremendously  barbarous,  Hume  observed  this 
circumstance,  and  attributes  it  to  "  the  turn  that  the 
romantic  chivalry,  for  which  the  nation  was  formerly  so 
renowned,  had  lately  taken."  An  inference  probably 
drawn  from  the  extraordinary  duel  between  Sir  Edward 
Sackville,  afterwards  Lord  Dorset,  and  the  Lord  Bruce,* 
These  two  gallant  youths  had  lived  as  brothers,  yet  could 
resolve  not  to  part  without  destroying  each  other ;  the 
narrative  so  wonderfully  composed  by  Sackville,  still 
makes  us  shudder  at  each  bloAV  received  and  given. 
Books  were  published  to  instruct  them  by  a  system  of 
quarrelling,  "  to  teach  young  gentlemen  when  they  are 
beforehand  and  when  behindhand  ;"  thus  they  incensed 
and  incited  those  youths  of  hope  and  promise,  whom 
Lord  Bacon,  in  his  charge  on  duelling,  calls,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  poet,  Aurorm  fillip  the  sons  of  the  morning, 
— who  often  were  drowned  in  their  own  blood !  But,  on 
a  nearer  inspection,  when  we  discover  the  personal  mar 
lignity  of  these  hasty  quarrels,  the  coarseness  of  their 
manners,  and  the  choice  of  weapons  and  places  in  their 
mode  of  butchering  each  other,  we  must  confess  that  they 
rarely  partake  of  the  spirit  of  chivalry.  One  gentleman 
biting  the  ear  of  a  Templar,  or  switching  a  poltroon 
lord  ;  another  sending  a  challenge  to  fight  in  a  saw-pit ; 
or  to  strip  to  their  shirts,  to  mangle  each  other,  were 
sanguinary  duels,  which  could  only  have  fermented  in 
the  disorders  of  the  times,  amid  that  wanton  pampered 
indolence  which  made  them  so  petulant  and  pugnacious. 
Against  this  evil  his  Majesty  published  a  voluminous 
edict,  which  exhibits  many  proofs  that  it  was  the  laboui* 
of  his  own  hand,  for  the  same  dignity,  the  same  eloquence, 
the   same  felicity  of   illustration,  embellish    the    state- 

*  It  may  be  found  in  the  popular  pages  of  the  "Guardian;"  there 
first  printed  from  a  MS.  in  the  library  of  tlie  Harleys. 


576  CHARAOTER   OF  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

papers ;  *  and  to  remedy  it,  James,  who  rarely  consented 
to  shed  blood,  condemned  an  irascible  lord  to  sutFer  the 
ignominy  of  the  gallows. 

But,  while  extortion  and  monopoly  prevailed  among 
the  monied  men,  and  a  hollow  magnificence  among  the 
gentry,  bribery  had  tainted  even  the  lords.  All  were 
hurrying  on  in  a  stream  of  venality,  dissipation,  and 
want ;  and  the  nation,  amid  the  prosperity  of  the  king- 
dom in  a  long  reign  of  peace,  was  nourishing  in  its  breast 
the  secret  seeds  of  discontent  and  turbulence. 

From  the  days  of  Elizabeth  to  those  of  the  Charleses, 
Cabinet  transmitted  to  Cabinet  the  caution  to  preserve 
the  kingdom  from  the  evils  of  an  overgrown  metropolis. 
A  political  hypochondriacism  :  they  imagined  the  head 
was  becoming  too  large  for  the  body,  drawing  to  itself 

*  "  A  publication  of  his  Majestie's  edict  and  seuere  censure  against 
private  combats  and  combatants,  &c."  1613.  It  is  a  volume  of  about 
150  pages.  As  a  specimen  of  the  royal  style,  I  transcribe  two  pas- 
sages:— 

"  The  pride  of  humours,  the  libertie  of  times,  the  conniiiencie  of 
magistrates,  together  witli  a  kind  of  prescription  of  impunity,  hath  bred 
ouer  all  this  kingdome,  not  only  an  opinion  amoug  the  weakest,  but  a 
constant  beleet'e  among  many  that  desire  to  be  reputed  amoug  the 
wisest,  of  a  certain  freedome  left  to  all  men  vpon  earth  by  nature,  as 
their  hirth-right  to  defend  their  reputations  with  their  swords,  and  to 
take  reuenge  of  any  wrong  either  offered  or  apprehended,  in  that 
measure  whicli  their  owne  inward  passion  or  affection  dotli  suggest, 
without  any  further  proo'e ;  so  as  the  challenge  bo  sent  in  a  civil 
manner,  though  without  leave  demanded  of  the  sovereign,''''  &c. 

The  king  employs  a  bold  and  poetical  metaphor  to  describe  duelling 
— to  tnrn  this  ha'vk  into  a  singing-bird,  clip  its  wings,  and  cage  it. 
"By  comparing  forraine  mischiefes  with  home-bred  accidents,  it  will  ■ 
not  be  hard  to  judge  into  what  region  this  bolde  bird  of  audacious  pre- 
sumption, in  dealing  blovves  so  conlidcntly,  will  mount,  if  it  bee  once 
let  fiie,  from  the  breast  wherein  it  lurkes.  And  therefore  it  behoveth 
justice  botii  to  keep  her  still  in  her  own  close  cage,  with  care  that  she 
learn  neiier  any  oilier  dittie  then  Est  bene  ;  but  withall,  that  for  pre- 
uontion  of  the  worst  that  may  fall  out,  wee  clippe  her  wings,  that  they 
grow  not  too  fast.  For  according  to  that  of  the  proverb.  It  is  labowr 
lost  to  Uiy  nets  he/ore  the  eyes  of  winged  fowles"  &c. — p.  13. 


ANECDOTES  OF   THE  MANNERS   OF   TUE   AGE.     577 

all  the  moisture  of  life  from  the  middle  and  the  extremities. 
A  statute  against  the  erection  of  new  buildings  was  passed 
by  Elizabeth ;  and  from  James  to  his  successors,  procla- 
mations were  continually  issued  to  forbid  any  growth  of 
the  city.  This  singular  prohibition  may  have  originated 
in  their  dread  of  infection  from  the  plague,  but  it  cer- 
tainly became  the  policy  of  a  weak  and  timid  govern- 
ment, who  dreaded,  io  the  enlargement  of  the  laetropolis, 
the  consequent  concourse  of  those  they  designated  as 
"  masterless  men," — sedition  was  as  contagious  as  the 
plague  among  the  many.  But  proclamations  were  not 
listened  to  nor  read ;  houses  were  continually  built,  for 
they  were  in  demand, — and  the  esquires,  with  their  wives 
and  daughters,  hastened  to  gay  or  busy  London,  for  a 
knighthood,  a  marriage,  or  a  monopoly.  The  govern- 
ment at  length  were  driven  to  the  desperate  "  Order  in 
Council "  to  pilll  down  all  new  houses  within  ten  miles  of 
the  metropolis — and  further,  to  direct  the  Attci  aey- 
General  to  indict  all  those  sojourners  in  town  who  liad 
country  houses,  and  mulct  them  in  ruinous  fines.  The 
rural  gentry  were  "  to  abide  in  their  own  counties,  and 
by  their  housekeeping  in  those  parts  were  to  guide  and 
relieve  the  meaner  people  according  to  the  ancient  usage 
of  the  English  nation.''''  The  Attorney-General,  like  all 
great  lawyers,  looking  through  the  spectacles  of  his 
books,  was  short-sighted  to  reach  to  the  new  causes  and 
the  new  effects  which  were  passing  around.  The  wisest 
laws  are  but  foolish  when  Time,  though  not  the  lawyers, 
has  annulled  them.  The  popular  sympathy  was,  how- 
ever, with  the  Attorney-General,  for  it  was  imagined 
that  the  country  was  utterly  ruined  and  depopulated  by 
the  town. 

And  so  in  the  view  it  appeared,  and  so  all  the  satirists 

chorused !    for  in  the   country   the   ancient  hospitality 

was  not  kept  up ;  the  crowd  of  retainers  had  vanished, 

the  rusty  chimneys  of  the  mansion-house  hardly  smoked 

37 


578  CHARACTER   OP  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 

through  a  Christmas  week,  while  in  London  all  was  ex- 
orbitantly prosperous ;  masses  of  treasure  were  melted 
down  into  every  object  of  magnificence.  "  And  is  not 
this  wealth  drawn  from  our  acres  ?  "  was  the  outcry  of 
the  rural  censor.  Yet  it  was  clear  that  the  country  in 
no  way  was  impoverished,  for  the  land  rose  in  price  ;  and 
if  manors  sometimes  changed  their  lords,  they  sufiered 
no  depreciation.  A  sudden  wealth  was  diffused  in  the 
nation ;  the  arts  of  commerce  were  first  advancing ;  the 
first  great  ship  launched  for  an  Indian  voyage,  was  then 
named  the  "  Trade's  Increase."  The  town,  with  its  mul- 
tiplied demands,  opened  a  perpetual  market  for  the  coun- 
try. The  money-traders  were  breeding  their  hoards  as 
the  graziers  their  flocks ;  and  while  the  goldsmiths'  shoj)S 
blazed  in  Cheap,  the  agriculturists  beheld  double  har- 
vests cover  the  soil.  The  innumerable  books  on  agricul- 
ture, published  during  these  twenty  years  of  peace  is  dzi 
evidence  of  .the  improvement  of  the  country — sustained 
by  the  growing  capitals  of  the  men  in  trade.  In  this 
progress  of  domestic  conveniency  to  metropolitan  luxury, 
there  was  a  transition  of  manners ;  new  objects  and  new 
interests,  and  new  modes  of  life,  yet  in  their  incipient  state. 
The  evils  of  these  luxuriant  times  were  of  quick 
growth ;  and  as  fast  as  they  sprung,  the  Father  of  his 
people  encountered  them  by  his  proclamations,  which, 
during  long  intervals  of  parliamentary  recess,  were  to  be 
enforced  as  laws :  but  they  j^assed  away  as  /L-Drning 
dreams  over  a  happy,  but  a  thoughtless  and  wanton  people. 


JAMES  THE  FIRST  DISCOVERS  THE  DISOR- 
DERS AND  DISCONTENTS  OF  A  PEACE  OP 
MORE  THAN  TWENTY  YEARS. 

The  kinjx  was  himself  amazed 'at  the  disorders  and 
discontents   he  at   length    discovered ;    and,  in    one  of 


DISORDERS  OP  A  TWENTY  YEARS'  PEACE.        579 

Lis  later  speeches,  has  expressed  a  mournful  disap- 
pointment : — 

"  And  now,  I  confess,  that  when  I  looked  before  upon 
the  face  of  the  government,  I  thought^  as  every  man 
would  have  done,  that  the  people  were  never  so  happy  as 
in  my  time  ;  but  even,  as  at  divers  times  I  have  looked 
upon  many  of  my  coppices,  riding  about  them,  and  they 
appeared,  on  the  outside,  very  thick  and  well-grown  unto 
me,  but,  when  I  turned  into  the  midst  of  them,  I  found 
them  all  bitten  within,  and  full  of  plains  and  bare  spots; 
like  the  apple  or  pear,  fair  and  smooth  without,  but  when 
you  cleave  it  asunder,  you  find  it  rotten  at  heart.  Even 
so  this  kingdom,  the  external  government  being  as  good 
as  ever  it  was,  and  I  am  sure  as  learned  judges  as  ever  it 
had,  and  I  hope  as  honest  administering  justice  within  it; 
and  for  peace,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  more  settled, 
and  longer  lasting,  than  ever  any  before ;  together  with  as 
great  plenty  as  ever:  so  as  it  may  be  thought,  every 
man  might  sit  in  safety  under  his  own  vine  and  fig- 
tree,"  &c.,  &c.* 

But  while  we  see  this  king  of  peace  surrounded  by 
national  grievances,  and  that  "  this  fair  coppice  was  very 
thick  and  well-grown,"  yet  loud  in  murmurs,  to  what 
cause  are  we  to  attribute  them  ?  Shall  we  exclaim  with 
Catharine  Macaulay  against  "the  despotism  of  James," 
and  "  the  intoxication  of  his  power  ?" — a  monarch  who 
did  not  even  enforce  the  proclamations  or  edicts  his  wis- 
dom dictated ;  f  and,  as  Hume  has  observed,  while  vaunt- 
ing his  prerogative,  had  not  a  single  regiment  of  guards 
to  maintain  it.     Must  we  agree  with  Hume,  and  reproach 

*  Rushworth,  vol.  i.,  p.  29  ;  sub  anno  1621. 

f  James  I.  said."  I  will  never  offer  to  bring  a  new  custom  upon  my 
people  without  the  people's  consent ;  like  a  good  physician,  tell  them 
what  is  amiss,  if  they  will  not  concur  to  amend  it,  yet  I  have  discharged 
my  part."  Among  the  di  fficulties  of  this  king  was  tliat  of  being  a  foreigner, 
and  amidst  the  contending  factions  of  that  day  tlie  "  British  Solomon  " 
seems  to  have  been  unjustly  reproached  for  his  Scottish  partialities. 


580  CHARACTER  OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

the  king  with  his  indolence  and  love  of  amusement — "  par- 
ticularly of  hunting  ?"  * 


THE    KING'S    PRIVATE    LIFE    IN"    HIS    OCCA- 
SIONAL  RETIREMENTS. 

The  king's  occasional  retirements  to  Roystou  and  New- 
market have  even  been  surmised  to  have  borne  some  anal- 
ogy to  the  horrid  Capraja  of  Tiberius  ;  but  a  witness  has 
accidentally  detailed  the  king's  uniform  life  in  these  occa- 
sional seclusions.  James  1  withdrew  at  times  from  pub- 
lic life,  but  not  from  public  affairs  ;  and  hunting,  to  which 
he  then  gave  alternate  days,  was  the  cheap  amusement 
and  requisite  exercise  of  his  sedentary  habits :  but  the 
cliase  only  occupied  a  few  hours.  A  part  of  the  day  was 
spent  by  the  king  in  his  private  studies  :  another  at  his 
dinners,  where  he  had  a  reader,  and  was  perpetually 
sending  to  Cambridge  for  books  of  reference :  state  affairs 
were  transacted  at  night ;  for  it  was  observed,  at  the  time, 
that  his  secretaries  sat  up  later  at  night,  in  those  occa- 
sional retirements,  than  when  they  were  at  London.f  I 
have  noticed,  that  the  state  papei'S  were  composed  by 

*  La  Boderie,  the  French  Ambassador,  complams  of  the  kiag's  fre- 
quent absences  ;  but  James  did  not  wish  too  close  an  intercourse  with 
one  who  was  making  a  Frcncli  party  about  Prince  Henry,  and  whose 
sole  object  was  to  provoke  a  Spanish  war  :  tlie  king  foiled  the  French 
intriguer  ;  but  has  incurred  his  contempt  for  being  "  timid  and  irreso- 
lute." James's  cautious  neutrality  was  no  merit  in  the  Frenchman's 
eye. 

La  Boderie  resided  at  our  court  from  1G06  to  1611,  and  his  "  Am- 
bassades,"  in  5  vols.,  are  interesting  in  English  history.  The  most 
satirical  accounts  of  the  domestic  life  of  James,  especially  in  his  un- 
guarded hours  of  boisterous  merriment,  are  found  in  the  correspondence 
of  the  French  ambassadors.  They  studied  to  flavour  their  dish,  mado 
of  spy  and  gossip,  to  the  taste  of  their  master.  Henry  IV.  never  for- 
ga-v%  James  for  his  adherence  to  Spain  and  peace,  instead  of  France 
and  warlike;  designs. 

f  Ilackot's  Scrinia  Reserata,  Part  I.,  p.  27. 


THE   KING'S   PRIVATE   LIFE.  581 

himself;  that  he  wrote  letters  on  important  occasions  with- 
out consulting  any  one ;  and  that  he  derived  little  aid 
from  his  secretaries.  James  was  j)robably  never  indo- 
lent ;  but  the  uniform  life  and  sedentary  habits  of  literary 
men  usually  incur  this  reproach  from  those  real  idlers  who 
bustle  in  a  life  of- nothingness.  While  no  one  loved 
more  the  still-life  of  peace  than  this  studious  monarch, 
whose  habits  formed  an  agreeable  combination  of  the  con- 
templative and  the  active  life,  study  and  business — no 
king  more  zealously  tried  to  keep  down  the  growing 
abuses  of  his  government,  by  personally  concerning  him- 
self in  the  protection  of  the  subject.* 

*  As  evidences  of  this  zeal  for  reform,  I  throw  into  this  note  some 
extracts  from  the  MS.  letters  of  contemporaries. — Of  the  king's  inter- 
ference between  the  judges  of  two  courts  about  prohibitions,  Sir  Dud- 
ley Carleton  gives  this  account : — "  The  king  played  the  best  part  in 
collecting  arguments  on  both  sides,  and  concluded  that  he  saw  much 
endeavour  to  draw  water  to  their  several  mills ;  and  advised  them  to 
take  moderate  courses,  whereby  the  good  of  the  subject  might  be  more 
respected  than  their  particular  jurisdictions.  The  king  sat  also  at  the 
Admiralty,  to  look  himself  into  certain  disorders  of  government  there; 
he  told  the  lawyers  '  he  would  leave  hunting  of  hares,  and  hunt  them 
in  their  quirks  and  subtilities,  with  which  the  subject  had  been  too  long 
abused.'  " — MS.  Letter  of  Sir  Dudley  Carleton. 

In  ""Win wood's  Memorials  of  State "  there  is  a  letter  from  Lord 
Northampton,  who  was  present  at  one  of  these  strict  examinations  of 
the  king  ;  and  his  language  is  warm  with  admiration:  the  letter  being 
a  private  one,  can  hardly  be  suspected  of  court  flattery.  "  His  Majesty 
hath  in  person,  with  the  greatest  dexterity  of  wit  and  strength  of  argu- 
ment that  mine  ears  ever  heard,  compounded  between  the  parties  of 
the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  courts,  who  begin  to  comply,  by  the  king's 
sweet  temper,  on  points  that  were  held  to  be  incompatible." — "Win- 
wood's  Mem.  iii.,  p.  54. 

In  his  progresses  through  the  country,  if  any  complained  of  having 
received  injury  from  any  of  the  court,  the  king  punished,  or  had  satiB« 
factioa  made  to  the  wronged,  immediately. 


582  CHARACTER   OP  JAMES   THE   FIRST. 


DISCREPANCIES  OF  OPINIO!^  AlklONG  THE 
DECRIERS   OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

Let  us  detect,  among  the  modern  decriers  of  the  charac- 
ter of  James  I.,  those  contradictory  opinions,  which  start 
out  in  the  same  page  ;  for  the  conviction  of  truth  flashed 
on  the  eyes  of  those  who  systematically  vilified  him,  and 
must  often  have  pained  them ;  while  it  embarrassed  and 
confused  those,  who,  being  of  no  party,  yet  had  adopted 
the  popular  notions.  Even  Hume  is  at  variance  with 
himself;  for  he  censures  James  for  his  indolence,  "  which 
prevented  him  making  any  progress  in  the  practice  of 
foreign  politics,  and  diminished  that  regard  which  all  the 
neighbouring  nations  had  paid  to  England  during  the 
reign  of  his  predecessor."  p.  29.  Yet  this  philosopher 
observes  afterwards,  on  the  military  character  of  Prince 
Henry,  at  p.  63,  that  "had  he  lived,  he  had  probably  pro- 
moted the  glory ^  perhajxs  not  the  felicity^  of  his  people. 
The  unhappy  prepossession  of  men  in  favour  of  ambition, 
&c.,  engages  them  into  such  pursuits  as  destroy  their 
own  peace,  and  that  of  the  rest  of  mankind.''''  This  is  true 
philosophy,  however  politicians  may  comment,  and  how- 
ever the  military  may  command  the  state.  Had  Hume, 
with  all  the  sweetness  of  his  temper,  been  a  philosopher 
on  the  throne,  himself  had  probably  incurred  the  censure 
he  passed  on  James  I.  Another  important  contradiction 
in  Hume  deserves  detection.  The  king,  it  seems,  "boast- 
ed of  his  management  of  Ireland  as  his  masterpiece." 
According  to  the  accounts  of  Sir  John  Davies,  whose  po- 
litical works  are  still  read,  and  whom  Hume  quotes,  James 
I.  "  in  the  space  of  nine  years  made  greater  advances  to- 
wards the  reformation  of  that  kingdom  than  had  been 
eifected  in  more  than  four  centuries ;"  on  this  Hume  adds 
that  the  king's  "  vanity  in  this  particular  was  not  with- 
out foundation."     Thus  in  describing  that  wisest  act  of 


OPINIONS  OF  THE  DECEIERS  OF  JAMES  I.         583 

a  sovereign,  the  art  of  humanising  his  ruder  subjects  by- 
colonisation,  so  unfortunate  is  James,  that  even  his  most 
skilful  apologist,  influenced  by  popular  prepossessions,  em- 
ploys a  degrading  epithet — and  yet  he,  who  had  indulged 
a  sai'casm  on  the  vanity  of  James,  in  closing  his  gen- 
eral view  of  his  wise  administration  in  Ireland,  is  carried 
away  by  his  nobler  feelings. — "  Such  were  the  arts,"  ex- 
claims the  historian,  "  by  which  James  introduced  human- 
ity and  justice  among  a  people  who  had  ever  been  buried 
in  the  most  profound  barbarism.  Noble  cares  !  much  su- 
perior to  the  vain  and  criminal  glory  of  conquests."  Let 
us  add,  that  had  the  genius  of  James  the  First  been  war- 
like, had  he  commanded  a  battle  to  be  fought  and  a  vic- 
tory to  be  celebrated,  popular  historians,  the  panders  of 
ambition,  had  adorned  their  pages  with  bloody  trophies ; 
but  the  peace  the  monarch  cultivated ;  the  wisdom  which 
dictated  the  plan  of  civilisation ;  and  the  persevering 
arts  which  put  it  into  practice — these  are  the  still  virtues 
which  give  no  motion  to  the  spectacle  of  the  historian, 
and  are  even  forgotten  in  his  pages. 

What  were  the  painful  feelings  of  Catharine  Macaulay, 
in  summing  up  the  character  of  James  the  First.  The 
king  has  even  extorted  from  her  a  confession,  that  "  his 
conduct  in  Scotland  was  unexceptionable^"  but  "  despica- 
ble in  his  Britannic  government."  To  account  for  this 
seeming  change  in  a  man  who,  from  his  first  to  his  last 
day,  was  always  the  same,  required  a  more  sober  his- 
torian. She  tells  us  also,  he  afiected  "  a  sententious  wit ;" 
but  she  adds,  that  it  consisted  "  only  of  quaint  ^.nd  stale 
conceits."  We  need  not  take  the  word  of  Mrs.  Macaulay, 
since  we  have  so  much  of  this  "  sententious  wit  "  record- 
ed, of  which  probably  she  knew  little.  Forced  to  confess 
that  James's  education  had  been  "  a  more  learned  one  than 
is  usually  bestowed  on  princes,"  we  find  how  useless  it  is 
to  educate  princes  at  all ;  for  this  "  more  learned  educa- 
tion "  made  this  prince  "  more  than  commonly  deficien< 


584:  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES   THE   FIRST, 

m  all  the  points  he  pretended  to  have  any  knowledge 
of!"  This  mcredible  result  gives  no  encouragement  for  a 
prince,  having  a  Buchanan  for  his  tutor.  Smollett,  hav- 
ing compiled  the  popular  accusations  of  the  "  vanity,  the 
prejudices,  the  littleness  of  soixl,"  of  this  abused  monarch, 
surprises  one  in  the  same  page  by  discovering  enough 
good  qualities  to  make  something  more  than  a  tolerable 
king.  "  His  reign,  though  ignoble  to  himself,  was  happy 
to  his  people,  who  were  enriched  by  commerce,  felt  no 
severe  impositions,  while  they  made  considerable  progress 
in  their  liberties,"  So  that,  on  the  whole,  the  nation  ap- 
pears not  to  have  had  all  the  reason  they  have  so  fully 
exercised  in  deriding  and  vilifying  a  sovereign,  who  had 
made  them  prosperous  at  the  price  of  making  himself 
contemptible !  I  shall  notice  another  writer,  of  an  amia- 
ble character,  as  an  evidence  of  the  influence  of  popular 
prejudice,  and  the  effect  of  truth. 

When  James  went  to  Denmark  to  fetch  his  queen,  he 
passed  part  of  his  time  among  the  learned;  but  such 
was  his  habitual  attention  in  studying  the  duties  of  a 
sovereign,  that  he  closely  attended  the  Danish  courts  of 
justice ;  and  Daines  Barrington,  in  his  curious  "  Obser- 
vations on  the  Statutes,"  mentions,  that  the  king  bor- 
rowed from  the  Danish  code  three  statutes  for  the  pun- 
ishment of  criminals.  But  so  provocative  of  sarcasm  is 
the  ill-used  name  of  this  monarch,  that  our  author  could 
not  but  shrewdly  observe,  that  James  "  spent  more  time 
in  those  courts  than  in  attending  upon  his  destined  con- 
sort,'" Yet  this  is  not  true :  the  king  was  jovial  there, 
and  was  as  indulgent  a  husband  as  he  was  a  father. 
Osborne  even  censures  James  for  once  giving  marks  of 
his  uxoriousness  !  *  But  while  Daines  Barrington  de- 
grades, by  unmerited  ridicule,  the  honourable  employ- 
ment of  the  "  British  Solomon,"  he  becomes  himself  per- 

*  See  "Curiosities  of  Literature,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  334, 


OPIinONS  OF  THE  DECRIERS  OF  JAMES  I.         585 

plexed  at  the  truth  that  flashes  on  his  eyes.  He  ex- 
presses the  most  perfect  admiration  of  James  the  First, 
•whose  statutes  he  declares  "  deserve  much  to  be  enforced ; 
nor  do  I  find  any  one  which  hath  the  least  tendency  to 
extend  the  prerogative,  or  abridge  the  liberties  and 
rights  of  his  subjects."  He  who  came  to  scoff  remained 
to  pray.  Thus  a  lawyer,  in  examining  the  laws  of  James 
the  First,  concludes  by  approaching  neai-er  to  the  truth : 
the  step  was  a  bold  one !  He  says,  "  It  is  at  ^^resent  a 
sort  of'  fashion  to  suppose  that  this  king,  because  he 
was  a  pedant,  had  no  real  understanding,  or  merit." 
Had  Daines  Barrington  been  asked  for  proofs  of  the 
pedantry  of  James  the  First,  he  had  been  still  more  per- 
plexed ;  but  what  can  be  more  convincing  than  a  law- 
yer, on  a  review  of  the  character  of  James  the  First, 
being  struck,  as  he  tells  us,  by  "  his  desu-e  of  being  in- 
structed in  the  English  law,  and  holding  frequent  confer- 
ences for  this  pxirpose  with  the  most  eminent  lawyers, — 
as  Sir  Edward  Coke,  and  others  !"  Such  was  the  mon- 
arch whose  character  was  perpetually  reproached  for  in- 
dolent habits,  and  for  exercising  arbitrary  power !  Even 
Mr.  Brodie,  the  vehement  adversary  of  the  Stuarts, 
quotes  and  admii-es  James's  prescient  decision  on  the 
character  of  Laud  in  that  remarkable  conversation  with 
Buckingham  and  Prince  Charles  recorded  by  Hacket.* 

But  let  us  leave  these  moderns  perpetuating  traditional 
prejudices,  and  often  to  the  fiftieth  echo,  still  sounding 
with  no  voice  of  its  own,  to  learn  what  the  unprejudiced 
contemporaries  of  James  I.  thought  of  the  cause  of  the 
disorders  of  their  age.  They  were  alike  struck  by  the 
wisdom  and  the  zeal  of  the  monarch,  and  the  prevalent 
discontents  of  this  long  reign  of  peace.  At  first,  says 
the  continuator  of  Stowe,  all  ranks  but  those  "  who  were 
pettled  in  piracy,"  as  he  designates  the  cormorants  of 

*  Brodie's  "History  of  British  Empire,"  vol  iL,  pp.  244,  411, 


586  CHARACTER   OF   JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

war,  and  curiously  enumerates  their  classes,  "  were  right 
joyful  of  the  peace ;  but,  in  a  few  years  afterwards,  all 
the  benefits  were  generally  forgotten,  and  the  happiness 
of  the  general  peace  of  the  most  part  contemned."  The 
honest  annalist  accounts  for  this  unexpected  resiilt  by 
the  natural  reflection — "  Such  is  the  world's  corruption, 
and  man's  vile  ingratitude."*  My  philosophy  enables 
me  to  advance  but  little  beyond.  A  learned  contempo- 
rary. Sir  Symond  D'Ewes,  in  his  manuscript  diary, 
notices  the  death  of  the  monarch,  whom  he  calls  "  our 
learned  and  peaceable  sovereign." — "  It  did  not  a  little 
amaze  me  to  see  all  men  generally  slight  and  disregard 
the  loss  of  so  mild  and  gentle  a  prince,  which  made  me 
even  to  feel,  that  the  ensuing  times  might  yet  render  his 
loss  more  sensible,  and  his  memory  more  dear  unto  pos- 
terity." Sir  Symond  censures  the  king  for  not  engaging 
in  the  German  war  to  support  the  Palsgrave,  and  main- 
tain "  the  true  church  of  God ;"  but  deeper  politicians 
have  applauded  the  king  for  avoiding  a  war,  in  which  he 
could  not  essentially  have  served  the  interests  of  the  rash 
prince  who  had  assumed  the  title  of  King  of  Bohemia.f 
"Yet,"  adds  Sir  Symond,  "if  we  consider  his  virtues 
and  his  learning,  his  augmenting  the  liberties  of  the 
English,  rather  than  his  oppressing  them  by  any  un- 
limited or  illegal  taxes  and  corrosions,  his  death  deserved 
more  sorrow  and  condolement  from  his  subjects  than  it 
found."! 

Another  contemporary  author,  Wilson,  has  not  ill- 
traced  the  generations  of  this  continued  peace — "  peace 
begot  plenty,  plenty  begot  ease  and  wantonness,  and 
ease  and  wantonness  begot  poetry,  and  poetry  swelled 

*  Stowo's  Annals,  p.  845. 

f  See  Sir  Edward  Walker's  "  Hist.  Discourses,"  p.  321 ;  and  Bar- 
rii-gton's  "  Obsorv.  on  the  Statutes,"  who  saya,  "  For  this  lie  deserves 
the  highest  praise  and  commendation  from  a  nation  of  islanders." 

X  Harl.  MSS.  646. 


SUMMARY  OF  HIS  CHARACTER.  5S7 

out  into  that  bulk  in  this  king's  time  which  hegot  mon- 
strous satyrs."  Such  were  the  lascivious  times,  which 
dissolving  the  ranks  of  society  in  a  general  corruption, 
created  on  one  part  the  imaginary  and  itnlimited  wants 
of  prosperity ;  and  on  the  other  produced  the  riotous 
children  of  indolence,  and  the  turbulent  adventurers  of 
want.  The  rank  luxuriance  of  this  reign  was  a  steaming 
hot-bed  of  peace,  which  proved  to  be  the  seed-plot  of 
that  revolution  which  was  reserved  for  the  unfortunate 
son. 

In  the  subsequent  reign  a  poet  seems  to  have  taken  a 
retrospective  view  of  the  age  of  peace  of  James  I.  con- 
templating on  its  results  in  his  own  disastrous  times — 

States  that  never  know 
A  change  but  in  their  growth,  whicli  a  long  peace 
Hath  brought  unto  perfection,  are  like  steel, 
"Which  being  neglected  will  consume  itself 
With  its  own  rust ;  so  doth  Security 
Eat  through  the  hearts  of  states,  while  they  are  sleeping 
And  lulled  into  false  quiet. 

Nabb's  Hannibal  and  Scipio. 


SUM^IART  OF  HIS  CHARACTER. 

Thus  the  continued  peace  of  James  L  had  calamities 
of  its  own !  Are  we  to  attribute  them  to  the  king  ?  It 
has  been  usual  with  us,  in  the  solemn  expiations  of  our 
history,  to  convert  the  sovereign  into  the  scape-goat  for 
the  people ;  the  historian,  like  the  priest  of  the  Hebrews, 
laying  his  hands  on  Azazel,*  the  curses  of  the  multitude 
are  heaped  on  that  devoted  head.  And  thus  the  histo- 
rian conveniently  solves  all  ambiguous  events. 

The  character  of  James  I,  is  a  moral  phenomenon,  a  sin- 
gularity of  a  complex  nature.     We  see  that  we  cannot 

*  The  Hebrew  name,  which  Calmet  translates  Bcnio  Emissalre,  and 
we  Scape  Goat,  or  rather  Escape  Goat. 


588  CHARACTER  OF  JAMES  THE  FIRST. 

trust  to  those  modern  writers  who  have  passed  their 
censures  upon  him,  however  just  may  be  those  very- 
censures  ;  for  when  we  look  narrowly  into  their  represent- 
ations, as  sui'ely  we  find,  perhaps  Mdthout  an  exception, 
that  an  invective  never  closes  without  some  unexpected 
mitigating  circumstance,  or  qualifying  abatement.  At 
the  moment  of  inflicting  the  censure,  some  recollection 
in  opposition  to  what  is  asserted  passes  in  the  mind,  and 
to  approximate  to  Truth,  they  ofier  a  discrepancy,  a  self- 
contradiction.  James  must  always  be  condemned  on  a 
system,  while  his  apology  is  only  allowed  the  benefit  of 
a  parenthesis. 

How  it  has  happened  that  our  luckless  crowned  phi- 
losopher has  been  the  common  mark  at  which  so  many 
quivers  have  been  emptied,  should  be  quite  obvious 
when  so  many  causes  were  operating  against  him.  The 
shifting  positions  into  which  he  was  cast,  and  the  ambi- 
guity of  his  character,  will  unriddle  the  enigma  of  his 
life.  Contrarieties  cease  to  be  contradictions  when 
operated  on  by  external  causes. 

James  was  two  persons  in  one,  frequently  opposed  to 
each  other.  He  was  an  antithesis  in  human  nature — or 
even  a  solecism.  "We  possess  ample  evidence  of  his 
shrewdness  and  of  his  simplicity;  we  find  the  lofty 
regal  style  mingled  with  his  familiar  bonhommie. 
Warm,  hasty,  and  volatile,  yet  with  the  most  patient 
zeal  to  disentangle  involved  deception ;  such  gravity  in 
sense,  such  levity  in  humour ;  such  wariness  and  such  in- 
discretion ;  such  mystery  and  such  openness — all  these 
must  have  often  thrown  his  Majesty  into  some  awkward 
dilemmas.  He  was  a  man  of  abstract  speculation  in  the 
theory  of  human  affairs ;  too  witty  or  too  aphoristic,  he 
never  seemed  at  a  loss  to  decide,  but  too  careless,  per- 
haps too  infirm,  ever  to  come  to  a  decision,  he  leaned  on 
otliers.  He  shrunk  from  the  council-table  ;  he  had  that 
distaste  for  the  routine  of  business  which  studious  seden- 


SUMMARY  OF  HIS  CHARACTER.  589 

tary  men  are  too  apt  to  indulge  ;  and  imagined  that  his 
health,  which  he  said  was  the  health  of  the  kingdom, 
depended  on  the  alternate  days  which  he  devoted  to 
the  chase ;  Royston  and  Theobalds  were  more  delectable 
than  a  deputation  from  the  Commons,  or  the  Court  at 
Whitehall. 

It  has  not  always  been  arbitrary  power  which  has 
forced  the  people  in  the  dread  circle  of  their  fate,  sedi- 
tions, rebellions,  and  civil  wars ;  nor  always  oppressive 
taxation  which  has  given  rise  to  public  grievances. 
Such  were  not  the  crimes  of  James  the  First.  Amid 
the  full  blessings  of  peace,  we  find  how  the  people  are 
prone  to  corrupt  themselves,  and  how  a  philosopher  on 
the  throne,  the  father  of  his  people,  may  live  without 
exciting  gratitude,  and  die  without  inspiring  regret — 
unregarded,  imremembered ! 


I]:^DEX. 


Abeenetht's  opinion  of  enthusiasm, 
195. 

Abstraction  of  mind  in  great  men, 
179-183. 

Actors,  traits  of  character  in  great, 
185. 

Adrian  VI.,  Pope,  persecutes  literary 
men,  32. 

.Esthetic  critics,  368. 

Akenside  on  the  nature  of  genius,  47. 

Alpieri,  childhood  of,  50;  loneliness  of 
his  character,  132;  excited  by  Plu- 
tarch's works,  190. 

A-NGELO,  Michael,  illustrates  Dante,  36; 
his  ideas  of  intellectual  labour,  118; 
his  reason  for  a  solitary  life,  151;  his 
picture  of  battle  of  Pisa  destroyed  by 
Bandinelli,  211 ;  his  elevated  char- 
acter, 831 ;  his  letter  to  Vasari  de- 
scribing the  death  of  his  servant,  4S5. 

Antipathies  of  men  of  genius,  214-218. 

Anxiety  of  genius,  104;  of  authors  and 
artists  over  their  labours,  112-122. 

Aristophanes,  popularised  by  a  false 
preface,  375. 

Art  Friendships,  276-278. 

Aj'.tists,  "  Studies,"  or  first  thoughts, 
176;  their  mutu.al  jealousies,  208-212. 

AuTOBiOQKAPuy,  its  interest,  385. 

Barry  the  painter,  his  love  of  ancient 
literature,  88;  his  general  enthusiasm, 
86;  his  rude  eloquence,  146. 

Baii.let  and  his  catalogue,  458. 

Beattie  describes  the  powerful  effect 
on  himself  of  metaphysical  study,  197. 

Birch,  Dr.,  and  Eobertson  the  Histo- 
rian, 445-455. 

Boccaccio's  friendship  for  Petrarch, 
280-282. 

Book  Collkctors,  299-804. 

Booksellers,  the  test  of  public  opinion, 
258. 

Bosuis,  his  researches  in  the  Roman 
catacombs,  194. 

Boyle  on  the  disjiosition  of  childhood, 
49;  his  advertisement  against  visitors, 
n.,  154;  his  idea  of  a  literary  retreat, 
249. 

Bruce,  the  traveller,  disbelieved,  110. 

BiJFKoN  gives  a  reason  for  his  fame, 
127. 

Buonaparte  revives  old  military  tac- 
tics, 843. 


BtTRNs's  diary  of  the  heart,  100. 
Burton,  his  constitutional  melancholy, 

290. 
BuNY.\N  a  self-taught  genius,  86. 
Byron's  loneliness  of  feeling,  n.,  183. 

Calumny  frequently  attacks  genius, 
246. 

Cantenac  and  his  autobiography,  386. 

Caracci,  the,  their  unfortunate  jeal- 
ousies, 210. 

Castagno  murders  a  rival  artist,  211. 

Charles  V.,  friendship  for  Titian,  .332; 
Robertson's  life  of,  446. 

Chatelet,  Madame  de,  a  female  philoso- 
pher and  friend  of  Voltaire,  130. 

Chatham,  Earl  of,  his  constancy  of 
study,  .132. 

Chenikr  a  literary  fratricide,  230. 

Cicero  on  youthful  influence,  50. 

Clarendon,  his  love  of  retirement,  152. 

Coaches,  their  first  invention,  467. 

Coal,  its  first  use  as  fuel,  471. 

Coma  Vigil,  a  disease  produced  by 
stud}',  198. 

Composition,  its  toils,  112-118. 

Conti;mporary  criticism,  frequently  un- 
just, 105. 

Conversations  of  men  of  genius,  136- 
149 ;  those  who  converse  well  seldom 
write  well,  143. 

Cotin,  Abb6,  troubled  by  wealth,  249. 

Craciieroiie.  Rev.  C  M.,  his  collections 
of  art  and  literature,  «.,  26. 

Criticis.m  not  always  just,  92-106. 

CuRRiE,  his  Idea  of  the  power  of  genius, 
42. 

Cuvier's  discoveries  in  natural  history, 
194. 

Dante,  his  great  abstraction  of  mind, 

ISO. 
Deaths  of  literary  men,  819. 
Depreciation,  theory  of,  214. 
Diaries,  their  value,  1G5. 
Disease  induced  by  severe  study,  197. 
Domenichino  poisoned  by  rivals,  211. 
Domestic  Novelties  at  first  condemned, 

462-474. 
Domestic  life  of  literary  men,  281-24T. 
Dreams  of  eminent  men,  171-178. 
Drduais  an  enthusiastic  painter,  205. 

England  and  its  tastes,  346. 


INDEX. 


591 


Family  affection  an  incentive  to  genius, 

238-242. 
Fenblon's  early  enthusiasm  for  Greece, 

203. 
First  Studies  of  great  men,  79-85;  first 

thoughts  for  great  works,  174^180. 
i'ouKS,  when  first  used,  4i>3. 
Fkanklin,  Dr.,  notes  tlm  calming  of  the 

sea,  179;   his  influence  on  American 

manners,  357. 
FtJSELi's  imaginative  power,  202. 

G  vLii.EO  invents  the  pendulum.  178. 

Galvanism  first  discovered,  179. 

Gesxer  recommends  a  study  of  litera- 
ture to  artists,  33 ;  on  enthusiasm. 
206;  his  wife  a  model  for  those  of 
literary  men,  272-275. 

Gleim  and  his  portrait  gallery,  279. 

Goldsmith  contrasted  with  Johnson, 
3S4. 

QoLDONi  overworks  his  mind,  197. 

Government  of  the  thoughts,  159. 

Gray's  excitement  in  composing  verse, 
189. 

GdiBERT,  his  great  work  on  military 
tactics,  348. 

HABiTtTAL  Pdesuits,  their  power  over 
the  mind,  394-397. 

Hallucinations  of  genius,  19S;  real- 
ities with  some  minds,  201. 

Haydn,  his  regulation  of  his  time,  127. 

Helmonts  (Van)  love  of  study,  203. 

Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Lord,  questions 
the  Deity  as  to  the  publication  of  his 
book,  19S. 

Hobbes,  theory  to  explain  his  teiTor, 
201. 

Hogarth,  attacks  on,  n.,  120. 

Hollis,  his  miserable  celib.icy,  266. 

Honours  awarded  literary  men,  327- 
338. 

Horne  (Bishop),  his  love  of  literary 
labour,  182. 

Hume,  the  historian,  his  irritability,  120; 
unfitted  for  gay  life,  135;  gives  his 
reason  for  literary  labour,  ?i.^236;  en- 
deavours to  correct  Robertson,  445. 

Hunter,  Dr.,  fraternal  jealousy,  209. 

Hypochondria,  its  cause  and  effect,  201. 

Ideality  defined,  185;  its  power,  186- 

206. 
Incompleted  books,  456-462. 
Industry  of  great  writers.  169. 
Influence    of  authors,  350-354;    357- 

361. 
Intellectital  nobility,  329. 
Imitation  in  literature^  397-401. 
IRRIT.4.BIL1TV  of  genius,  99;  119-122. 
IsocRATEs'  belief   in    native   character, 

51. 

James  I.,  a  critical  disquisition  on  the 

character  of.  493. 
Julian,  Emperor,  anecdotes  of,  13.3. 
Jealousy  in  art  and  literature.  207-213; 

of  honours  p.iid  to  literary  men,  329. 


Johnson,  Dr.,  defines  the  literary  char 
acter,  25;  his  moral  dignity,  254;  his 
metaphysical  loves,  265;  anecdotes  of 
him  and  Goldsmith,  384. 

Juvenile  works,  their  value,  S4. 

Labour  endured  by  great  authors,  105 
a  pleasure  to  some  minds,  234-2-36. 

Letters  in  the  vernacular  idiom,  487- 
492. 

LINN.EUS  sensitive  to  ridicule,  105; 
honours  awarded  to,  258. 

Literary  Friendship,  276-286. 

Literature  an  avenue  to  glory,  326. 

Locke's  simile  of  the  human  mind,  40. 

Mannerists  in  literature,  3S2. 

Marco  Polo  ridiculed  unjustly.  «.,  110. 

Matrimonial  State  in   literatm-e  and 

art,  262-275. 
M.\zzucuELH  a  great  literary  historian, 

457. 
Meditation,  value  of,  174. 
Memory,  as  an  art,  163,  165. 
Mendelssohn,   Moses,   his    remarkable 

history,  87-91. 
Men  of  Letters,  their  definition,  298- 

313. 
Metastasio  a  bad  sportsman,  57 ;   his 

susceptibility,  189. 
Milton,  his  high  idea  of  the  literary 

character,   25;    his  theory   of  genius, 

41;  his  love  of  study,  183;  sacrifices 

sight  to  poetry,  204. 
Miscellanists  and    their  works,  369- 

373. 
Modes  op  Study  used  by  great  men, 

169. 
MoLiERE,  his  dramatic  career,  404-424. 
Montaigne,  his  personal  traits,  293. 
More,  Dr.,  on  enthusiasm    of  genius, 

200. 
Moreri  devotes  a  life  to  literature,  204, 
Mortimer,  the  artist,  his  athletic  exer- 
cises, 59. 
MuRATOKi,  his  literary  industry,  456. 

National  tastes  in  literature,  341. 
Necessity,  its  influence  on  literature, 
255-257. 

Obscure  Births  of  great  men,  326-  52^. 
Old  Age  of  literary  men,  813-320. 

Peculiar  habits  of  authors,  161-163. 

Peiresc,  his  early  bias  toward  litera- 
ture, 307 ;  his  studious  career,  309. 

Personal  Character  differs  from  the 
literary  one,  287-297. 

Petrarch's  remarkable  conversation 
on  his  melancholy,  96;  his  mode  of 
life,  lf.5. 

Pope,  his  anxiety  over  his  Homer,  118; 
severity  of  his  early  studies.  198. 

PoussiN  fears  tr.ading  in  art,  256. 

Poverty  of  literary  men,  247;  some- 
times a  choice.  249-251. 

Practical  Knowledge  of  life  W8l  i5ng 
in  studious  men,  243-246. 


592 


IITOEX. 


Pbatees  of  great  men,  196. 
Preoiettses,  411-415. 
Predisposition  of  the  mind,  160 
Prefaces,    their    interest,    873;    their 

oceasiond   falsehood,  8*4;    vanity   of 

authors  in,  376 ;  Idle  apologies  in,  377 ; 

Dryden's  interesting,  378. 
Prejudices,  literary,  213-21G. 
Public  Taste  formed  by  public  writers, 

351. 

Eacine,  sensibility  of,  116;  424-432. 

Hambouillet,  Ho'tcl  do,  411^13. 

Reaping  analyzed,  3SS-394. 

Eecluse  manners  in  great  authors,  135- 
136. 

Eelics  of  men  of  genius,  335-838. 

Eemuneration  of  literature.  257-259. 

Residences  of  literary  men,  335-338. 

Eeynolds,  Sir  J.,  his  "automatic  sys- 
tem," 42 ;  discovers  its  inconsistencies, 
44. 

EiDicuLE  the  terror  of  genius,  ISO. 

Robektson  the  historian,  443-455. 

Roland,  Madame,  anecdote  of  the  power 
of  poetry  on,  189. 

Romney,  his  anxiety  over  his  picture 
of  the  Tempest,  114. 

Rousseau's  expedient  to  endure  society, 
103;  his  domestic  infelicity,  234. 

Eotal  Society,  attacks  on,  ji.,  27. 

EUBENS'  transcripts  of  the  poets,  36. 

Sand-wich,  Lord,   his   first   idea   of  a 

stratagem  at  sea,  178. 
ScuDERY,  Mademoiselle,  412. 
Sensitiveness  of  genius,  101-103;  109- 

110;  187-189. 
Self-lmmolation  of  genius  to  labour, 

203. 
Self-praise  of  genius,  217-227. 
Servants,  a  dissertation  on,  474-486. 
Shee,  Sir  M.  A.,  relations  of  poetry  and 

painting,  w.,  37. 
Suenstonk,  his  early  love,  264. 
SiDDONS,  Mrs.,  anecdote  of,  185. 
Singleness  of  genins,  322-325. 
Society,  artilicial,  an  injury  to  genius, 

Solitude  loved  by  men  of  genius,  54-60 ; 

149-157. 
Btbau  first  discovered,  ISO. 
Steene,  anecdotes  of,  432-443. 


Studies  of  advanced  life,  317-820. 
Style  and  its  peculiarities,  380-335. 
Susceptibility  of  men  of  genius,  226- 

229. 
Suggestions  of  one  mind  perfected  by 

another,  860-361. 

Tasso  uneasy  in  his  labours,  117. 

Taylor,  Dr.  Brook,  his  torpid  melan- 
choly, 233. 

Temple,  Sir  W.,  his  love  of  gardens,  370. 

Theoretical  hislorj',  445. 

Thomson,  his  sensitiveness  to  grand 
poetry,  191 ;  irritability  over  false 
criticisms,  92. 

Tobacco,  its  introduction  into  England, 
470. 

Toothpicks,  origin  of,  465. 

Townley  Gallery  of  Sculpture,  w.,  26. 

Tkoubauouks,  their  Influence,  373. 

Umbrellas,  their  history,  466. 
Utilitarianism  and  its  narrow  view  of 

literature,  28. 
Universality  of  genius,  820. 

Van   Praun   refuses  to  part  with   his 

collection  to  an  emperor,  302 
Vernet  sketches  in  a  storm,  192. 
Vers  de  Societb,  401-404. 
ViNDICTIVENESS  of  geuiiis,  227-230. 
Visionaries  of  genius,  198. 
Visitors  disliked  by  literary  men,  153- 

154. 
Voltaire,  anecdote    of  his  visit  to  a 

country    house,    130;    his    universal 

genius,  322. 

Walpole's,  Horace,  opinion  of  Gray, 
125;  of  Burke,  126. 

Watson  neglects  research  in  his  pro- 
fessorship, 80. 

Werner's  discoveries  in  science,  194. 

Wilkes  desirous  of  literary  glory,  81. 

Wit  sometimes  mechanical,  170. 

Wives  of  literary  men,  267-275. 

Works  intended,  but  not  executed,  166. 

Wood.  Anthony,  sacrifices  all  to  study, 
204.  ■'' 

Young,  the  poet,  his  want  of  sympathy, 

245. 
Touxn  of  great  men,  52-78. 


THE  END. 


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